Shifting to more diesel will cause the price of diesel to go up relative to gasoline. This has already started with the increased popularity of diesel cars in Europe.
Of course, 30 years ago, we were in an oil crisis as a result of the Iranian Revolution, which spiked the prices for a couple of years. In the 90's, gas was considerably cheaper again.
Except that the bad Russian harvest did impact global crop production. We're not talking about one drought in one year. As the average temperature goes up, these droughts are expected to increase in frequency.
There are also expected to be less exception "cold snaps"
Maybe. There are some theories that the melting arctic ice could be responsible for changing weather patterns that cause more cold winter weather in the US. In any case, the idea that higher temperatures and more CO2 are generally good for plants is not supported. In most areas of the world, the limiting factor to plant growth is the availability of water. Higher temperatures result in increased evaporation rates, so water becomes an even bigger factor.
Global warming itself will actually be better for crop production of just about every kind, and should actually increase the amount of arable land globally
Because there's a negative feedback due to rock weathering. CO2 reacts with some rocks to create carbonates that disappear into the earth's crust. This process depends on the temperature. Higher temperatures increase the rate at which CO2 is taken from the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, for us, this process acts very slowly (on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years), so it's not going to help us.
The 'original' graph has one less data point at the end. The updated graph includes that data point, which was fairly high, and it helped to push up the long term average just a little bit.
We had the most snow and coldest winter here locally in the past 50 years this year?
That's cool, but how does a local, short-term event, say anything about global warming ? Last winter was 0.43 degrees C warmer than average. Of course, that implies you look further than your own back yard.
The percentage of CO2 is irrelevant, when it's mixed with mostly N2 and O2 which don't block anything interesting themselves. What matters is the absolute amount of CO2 that the radiation from earth has to penetrate before it reaches space.
Imagine we could concentrate all the CO2 in the atmosphere by putting it all in a single layer of pure CO2. That layer would be a few meters thick.
No, it's a matter of the data doesn't agree with other data, including temperature data from other satellites. Measuring temperature from a satellite is much harder than measuring temperature with a thermometer on the surface. The satellite only measures IR radiation, but the problem is that it has to look through the entire layer of atmosphere, which is also emitting IR radiation itself.
It takes a complicated model to reconstruct the temperatures in that column of atmosphere from all the IR data. It's mistakes in that model that cause the problems in satellite temperature data.
We also all pay for the cost of emitting all that CO2 as a result of burning fossil fuels.
Also, once a solar panel has been built, the cost is reduced to cleaning and maintenance which aren't going to rise very much. If we assume fuel cost for other types of power plants will keep rising, it's worth investing a bit extra for solar energy.
In addition, increasing the amount of solar energy will bring benefits in terms of gained experience and economy of scale, which will bring the price down quicker.
This would mean that each home consumes 5 kW. That's really low
I don't know what kind of home you're used to, but for me, 5 kW average would be pretty high. That's probably close to my peak usage when I turn on several big appliances on at the same time, but that doesn't happen a whole lot. I don't have an electric stove, but even if you have one, it's not going to be used more than an hour/day, or so.
First of all, you'd have to specify what kind of "natural cycle" we are talking about. If it gets warmer, where does the heat come from ? The number of possible sources is limited. Possible candidates are the sun, change in albedo, change in ocean currents, change in atmosphere,and maybe a few more things. For each of those, it is possible to go out, do measurements, and see if there is correlation. These things have been looked at (and people are still looking at them), and so far, nothing has been found that could explain the temperature change.
At the same time, we have a perfect explanation based on CO2 greenhouse effect.
Do a google search for "Younger Dryas" and tell me that it is man that has to be the major factor in any warming which may be occurring today.
Except that's not how science works. We didn't go: "the earth is warming, man must have done it". Instead, scientists tried to understand the mechanisms, and the exact sequence of events that led to warming. They did that both for the modern era, and for the Younger Dryas. In both cases, they came up with a theory. The fact that these theories are different doesn't mean one is less likely to be correct than the other.
The theory than man is causing the warming is a perfectly reasonable one. We know man has increased CO2 in the atmosphere (by over 30%), we know that CO2 helps to block IR radiation that would otherwise be escaping from the earth. Ergo, the earth should be expected to warm. Also, when you do the calculations based on that, the results match the real temperature pretty well, not just for the modern era, but also for the glacial cycles and other events.
And if man didn't cause the warming, what is the alternative theory ? "Natural cycle" isn't a theory without explaining how this natural cycle works, and where the heat is actually coming from, and why it's happening now.
Todays scientific community runs on grant money I do not expect objectivity
Still, it's more likely than a worldwide conspiracy between scientist to produce a result nobody really wants to hear, not even the people handing them the grant money.
The point is that the design of the shuttle was influenced by the requirement to bring back heavy objects safely back to earth, and that design is pretty expensive going up.
Sure, after launching it, the cost of bringing it back down are small, but then again, a lot of things are cheap after they've already been paid for.
For instance, my main development machine is (a fairly typical) quad-core machine with 8GB RAM and lots of HDD. With the various development tools I use, I generally run about 75% RAM utilization with little or no swapping. If I were to add another 8GB RAM I would see virtually no performance increase
Why ? The extra RAM could be used as additional disk buffers. The fact that your current utilization is only 75% doesn't mean that extra RAM won't be used. It could be that the OS has a strategy to keep some free memory around to start new applications.
For example, my 4GB machine currently has 1.6GB free, which is an even lower utilization that yours.
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In order for the device to extract energy from heat, it needs to be cold itself.
It would have been easy to change the requirements to allow those cars on the US market.
Shifting to more diesel will cause the price of diesel to go up relative to gasoline. This has already started with the increased popularity of diesel cars in Europe.
Maybe by including some electric cars ?
From the ISS, it's not exactly 'deep space'.
Actually, the cartel isn't running the business anymore. Physics has taken over. All producing countries are basically pumping at their maximum.
Of course, 30 years ago, we were in an oil crisis as a result of the Iranian Revolution, which spiked the prices for a couple of years. In the 90's, gas was considerably cheaper again.
It's likely that cost/mile will be higher in 2025, even with the new standards.
Cool episode of 'Top Gear' showing a crash between an old heavy Volvo, and a modern Renault Modus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDyeWofcLY
Yeah, he should have let the car makers go bankrupt instead of bailing them out.
Except that the bad Russian harvest did impact global crop production. We're not talking about one drought in one year. As the average temperature goes up, these droughts are expected to increase in frequency.
Maybe. There are some theories that the melting arctic ice could be responsible for changing weather patterns that cause more cold winter weather in the US. In any case, the idea that higher temperatures and more CO2 are generally good for plants is not supported. In most areas of the world, the limiting factor to plant growth is the availability of water. Higher temperatures result in increased evaporation rates, so water becomes an even bigger factor.
Note that the US is experiencing a pretty bad drought too:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=midwest-turns-dry-as-drought
Except you are clearly mistaken:
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100809/160131934.html
As the world warms, such exceptional heat waves are expected to happen much more frequently.
Because there's a negative feedback due to rock weathering. CO2 reacts with some rocks to create carbonates that disappear into the earth's crust. This process depends on the temperature. Higher temperatures increase the rate at which CO2 is taken from the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, for us, this process acts very slowly (on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years), so it's not going to help us.
The 'original' graph has one less data point at the end. The updated graph includes that data point, which was fairly high, and it helped to push up the long term average just a little bit.
Here's the source from NASA, which looks very similar:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.gif
That's cool, but how does a local, short-term event, say anything about global warming ? Last winter was 0.43 degrees C warmer than average. Of course, that implies you look further than your own back yard.
The percentage of CO2 is irrelevant, when it's mixed with mostly N2 and O2 which don't block anything interesting themselves. What matters is the absolute amount of CO2 that the radiation from earth has to penetrate before it reaches space.
Imagine we could concentrate all the CO2 in the atmosphere by putting it all in a single layer of pure CO2. That layer would be a few meters thick.
Here's a demonstration that shows how a meter thick layer of CO2 can block IR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot5n9m4whaw
Now imagine you double the length of that layer. It's easy to see that the IR would be blocked even better.
Where does the article say that CO2 has nowhere near the ability to block heat that the AGW proponents would give it. ?
No, it's a matter of the data doesn't agree with other data, including temperature data from other satellites. Measuring temperature from a satellite is much harder than measuring temperature with a thermometer on the surface. The satellite only measures IR radiation, but the problem is that it has to look through the entire layer of atmosphere, which is also emitting IR radiation itself.
It takes a complicated model to reconstruct the temperatures in that column of atmosphere from all the IR data. It's mistakes in that model that cause the problems in satellite temperature data.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
We also all pay for the cost of emitting all that CO2 as a result of burning fossil fuels.
Also, once a solar panel has been built, the cost is reduced to cleaning and maintenance which aren't going to rise very much. If we assume fuel cost for other types of power plants will keep rising, it's worth investing a bit extra for solar energy.
In addition, increasing the amount of solar energy will bring benefits in terms of gained experience and economy of scale, which will bring the price down quicker.
I don't know what kind of home you're used to, but for me, 5 kW average would be pretty high. That's probably close to my peak usage when I turn on several big appliances on at the same time, but that doesn't happen a whole lot. I don't have an electric stove, but even if you have one, it's not going to be used more than an hour/day, or so.
First of all, you'd have to specify what kind of "natural cycle" we are talking about. If it gets warmer, where does the heat come from ? The number of possible sources is limited. Possible candidates are the sun, change in albedo, change in ocean currents, change in atmosphere,and maybe a few more things. For each of those, it is possible to go out, do measurements, and see if there is correlation. These things have been looked at (and people are still looking at them), and so far, nothing has been found that could explain the temperature change.
At the same time, we have a perfect explanation based on CO2 greenhouse effect.
Except that's not how science works. We didn't go: "the earth is warming, man must have done it". Instead, scientists tried to understand the mechanisms, and the exact sequence of events that led to warming. They did that both for the modern era, and for the Younger Dryas. In both cases, they came up with a theory. The fact that these theories are different doesn't mean one is less likely to be correct than the other.
The theory than man is causing the warming is a perfectly reasonable one. We know man has increased CO2 in the atmosphere (by over 30%), we know that CO2 helps to block IR radiation that would otherwise be escaping from the earth. Ergo, the earth should be expected to warm. Also, when you do the calculations based on that, the results match the real temperature pretty well, not just for the modern era, but also for the glacial cycles and other events.
And if man didn't cause the warming, what is the alternative theory ? "Natural cycle" isn't a theory without explaining how this natural cycle works, and where the heat is actually coming from, and why it's happening now.
Still, it's more likely than a worldwide conspiracy between scientist to produce a result nobody really wants to hear, not even the people handing them the grant money.
The point is that the design of the shuttle was influenced by the requirement to bring back heavy objects safely back to earth, and that design is pretty expensive going up.
Sure, after launching it, the cost of bringing it back down are small, but then again, a lot of things are cheap after they've already been paid for.
Depends on how you look at it. The shuttle has to take up heavy wings and heat shields in order to bring stuff down.
Why ? The extra RAM could be used as additional disk buffers. The fact that your current utilization is only 75% doesn't mean that extra RAM won't be used. It could be that the OS has a strategy to keep some free memory around to start new applications.
For example, my 4GB machine currently has 1.6GB free, which is an even lower utilization that yours.