Umm...hate to tell you but do you realize how much atmosphere there is on the Earth? Even at a gross overestimate of 10 mllion tonnes (to be on the safe side) that would make up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere. Reasearch before you post.
Here is some science. Even a small percentage of CO2 can have a significant warming effect.
"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.
But slowly. That is the problem. Excess CO2 easily removed over centuries or millenia - which is too long to avoid global warming.
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.
No. Only of current bulk transportation. Hydrogen can be stored chemically in ways that don't leak (such as in reversable metal hydrides).
Plus, there are other scientists who argue that the emitted water vapors may cause just as much of a problem.
As against the water evaporated off of the 70% of the world's surface that is ocean? Or the water that is breathed out by every living organism that respires?
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.
Yes, because CO2 is effective as a greenhouse gas at orders of magnitude less than water. Also CO2 is a minor constituent of the atmosphere, so anything we produce can have an effect.
"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.
Yes I can! 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.
Which then ejects water into the air, increasing the general humidity, creating a different type of global warming than we currently have.
Nonsense. The water that would be produced is totally insignificant compared to the amount produced by natural processes! To compare this amount of water by that evaporating of the surface of the oceans is ridiculous.
Increased solar output doesn't effect other celestial bodies? Better go back and start whitewashing ASAP!
What increased solar output? A few flares during one solar cycle does not amount to a long-term increase in solar output.
Or that after every peak CO2, you've had a boom in green growth around the world according to fossil records. Strange that...
Not strange at all. The problem is how long that growth boom takes to start absorbing CO2. This will not happen on a timescale of only decades, which is what we need in order to prevent problems.
Yes science has started to become twisted by enviromentalists, and politicians.
You mean those who wish to deny there is a problem.
The ones that haven't figured out that it's "theory" yet.
Theory = idea backed by facts.
You need to have a better understanding of solar physics and plant biology.
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.)
Except for the use of nuclear, wave or wind or solar power, which produce no CO2.
Without knowing the answers to these questions, it's just absurd to announce that global warming is "unstoppable". We have only the most shallow hypotheses about how the cycle works in the first place.
No-one is suggesting that global warming is permanent. What is unstoppable is the current warming effect. This means that we are almost certainly going to have to deal with centuries or millenia of increased temperatures, rather than decades.
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. The answer is to change technologies to those that produce less CO2. Expensive, but less expensive than the consequences of global warming.
We really have a huge lack of evidence about global warming. The earth is warming yes, but are we causing it?
It would be odd if pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere had no effect, wouldn't it?
The eart has gone to drastic changes over the course of several million years. Within the past 10,000 years, glaicers have formed and receeded in northern Europe and North America. Not too long ago, Chicago was covered in ice. It's why there is so much good farm land up near Indiana.
How is this relevant? During most of that period there were not that many people around (a few millions at most) and they lived tough lives. Now we have hundreds of millions living within a few metres of sea level, and we rely on subtle aspects of rainfall and climate to grow our food. Even a minor climate change could have a dramatic and very unpleasant effect.
The fact is that humans, even with all our pollution, can't put a dent in our planets ecosystem compared to the power of one rhylothetic (sp?) volcanic eruption
I can't check what you mean because of the spelling:)
However, we are having an impact. In a few decades we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - that is a major change.
On top of this, many geologists believe that we are currently in an Ice Age and we're on the cooling side of it!
"Even a moderate (few metres) rise in sea level will start to inundate the homes of millions in every country."
What about Bolivia and Nepal, you insensitive clod!
Floods don't just happen in countries at sea level. Global warming will change rainfall patterns and melt glaciers. For example, Nepal is likely to have serious water problems - periods of excess and drought.
Hyperbole is much easier than reasonable discussion.
No, not OK. Two words illustrate my point: Hurricane Katrina.
Most countries have built major cities very close to sea level. Even slightly increased temperatures will increase the ferocity of storms and sea surges. Even a moderate (few metres) rise in sea level will start to inundate the homes of millions in every country.
Of course life will continue on. We will be forced to adapt. But it is almost certain to be be distinctly unpleasant, with floods, famines, and major political and economic problems across the world. The next generation is going to have a hard time.
I have easily 20-30 languages installed on my several workstations, most of them not boasting great portability yet running just fine. The only language ever to refuse point blank to install and run on 75% of the attempted platforms is Java, the alleged run-anywhere language. Java's problems *in practice* exceed those of any other language I've used (and that's many dozens of them), by an order of magnitude.
As I have had the exact opposite experience - Java running with virtually no problems across a wide range of platforms, I would be curious to know what the problems are.
It is interesting to note that major Java applications - NetBeans, Tomcat, JBoss - have no problems running exactly the same code on a wide range of platforms - indeed, NetBeans - a Sun product - will run fine on other companies Java implementations - even clean-room (non-Sun code) ones like HP's.
Don't think I'm not for Unit Testing. Believe me, I'm an advocate of it here at work. In any situation we can (typically our libraries), we have unit tests with JUnit. But it just does not work when:
- you have complex web GUI that cannot be emulated with test frame work.
- you have complex database schema backing your application.
It certainly can work in those situations, as developers have been doing this for years.
You can use HTTPUnit to automatically generate http requests, form data, and to validate the results.
As for the database testing - that is often done using sample data in small databases such as HSQLDB.
How do we know the universe is 13.7 billion years old? It was recently discovered that the universe's expansion is accelerating as time goes by.
I think a better way to describe things is that some evidence was recently discovered which may be interpreted as suggesting that the universe's expansion is accelerating. As our understanding of the universe changes frequently (for example, the idea of a Big Bang was controversial when I was young), it seems to me to be too soon to say anything definite. The idea of acceleration is simply this year's/decades's latest theory.
The point that you are missing is that ( and this is a rule of marketing) is that the market leader never mentions the any competitors, but the rest of the companies ALWAYS mention the number one company so that potential consumers will equate their product with the market leader.
Like the way Microsoft never mentions Linux in any of its adverts.
I can't tell if this is simply naivete, or what. Read up on Freon and ozone damage, tobacco companies and lung cancer, etc. There's a long history of fradulent science.
No. There is a long history of fraudulently reporting science, which is another matter entirely. For example, the tobacco companies knew for a long time that tobacco caused cancer - this was established in recent court cases.
You can pay a scientist - or anyone else - to say anything you like, if you've enough money.
Not my definition of a scientist.
What they say, then, is important only if they have credibility as an impartial observer. As most science, these days, is funded by corporations, this is unbelievably scarce. However, paid-for work has zero credibility unless it can be verified by an impartial observer.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is for and how it works. Virtually all scientists do science for one reason - to discover things. They will use whatever funding they can get in order to do this, but this does not result in them producing false results - what would be the point? Corporations pay scientists in order to discover things. If they wanted biased results they could simply make them up! Furthermore, any scientist caught deliberately publishing false or biased data would find their career cut short.
Of course paid-for science (like any other) has to be verified, but to suggest that it has 'zero credibility' is to seriously misrepresent science and scientists.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm...hate to tell you but do you realize how much atmosphere there is on the Earth? Even at a gross overestimate of 10 mllion tonnes (to be on the safe side) that would make up less than 0.1% of the atmosphere. Reasearch before you post.
Here is some science. Even a small percentage of CO2 can have a significant warming effect.
Research before you post.
"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.
But slowly. That is the problem. Excess CO2 easily removed over centuries or millenia - which is too long to avoid global warming.
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.
No. Only of current bulk transportation. Hydrogen can be stored chemically in ways that don't leak (such as in reversable metal hydrides).
Plus, there are other scientists who argue that the emitted water vapors may cause just as much of a problem.
As against the water evaporated off of the 70% of the world's surface that is ocean? Or the water that is breathed out by every living organism that respires?
I think not.
So what we need to do is kill off all those animals exhaling CO2. Thanks, great idea!
Actually, the real problem is termites. They produce methane as well, which is far worse...
Now where did I put that Raid?
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.
... 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.
Yes, because CO2 is effective as a greenhouse gas at orders of magnitude less than water. Also CO2 is a minor constituent of the atmosphere, so anything we produce can have an effect.
"The widespread use of hydrogen fuel cells
See? You can't have it both ways.
Yes I can! 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.
Which then ejects water into the air, increasing the general humidity, creating a different type of global warming than we currently have.
Nonsense. The water that would be produced is totally insignificant compared to the amount produced by natural processes! To compare this amount of water by that evaporating of the surface of the oceans is ridiculous.
Any ideas on how to get nuclear, wave, or wind into a car, bus, or truck? Because I'm all ears.
Yes. Use those to electrolyse water, produce hydrogen. Use hydrogen power in fuel cells to power car, bus and truck.
With all this alarmism about the doubling of C02 levels, you do realize that the current C02 levels are roughly 360 parts per million, right?
That's an itsy bitsy teenie weenie fraction.
It isn't! At least not in terms of heat trapping.
If you have real data on the percentage (or number) of people that live within 10m of sea level, I would be glad to know. I imagine it is significant.
It is! It is several hundred million - mostly in very low-lying countries such as Bangladesh.
Increased solar output doesn't effect other celestial bodies? Better go back and start whitewashing ASAP!
What increased solar output? A few flares during one solar cycle does not amount to a long-term increase in solar output.
Or that after every peak CO2, you've had a boom in green growth around the world according to fossil records. Strange that...
Not strange at all. The problem is how long that growth boom takes to start absorbing CO2. This will not happen on a timescale of only decades, which is what we need in order to prevent problems.
Yes science has started to become twisted by enviromentalists, and politicians.
You mean those who wish to deny there is a problem.
The ones that haven't figured out that it's "theory" yet.
Theory = idea backed by facts.
You need to have a better understanding of solar physics and plant biology.
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.)
Except for the use of nuclear, wave or wind or solar power, which produce no CO2.
Not if the planet's capacity for absorbing said CO2 is significantly in excess of your "millions of tons" figure.
But it is obviously not absorbing it - this is evident from the atmospheric concentration increases.
In the long term, the CO2 will be absorbed by increased plant growth and the oceans. The long term is not soon enough.
However, NASA studies predict that the current solar maxima might be an unusually high one.
Irrelevant. This is an 11-year cycle. Global warming has been proceeding for much, much longer than that.
I'd love to see your source for this data.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California. Readings taken at Mauna Loa.
I've posted mine from the Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, and NASA.
No you haven't. You have given a link to one web page about an 11-year cycle.
One can only hope you've got sources of a similar caliber, otherwise your arguments are looking rather weak.
As weak as using an 11-year cycle to explain nearly a century of warming? I think not.
Without knowing the answers to these questions, it's just absurd to announce that global warming is "unstoppable". We have only the most shallow hypotheses about how the cycle works in the first place.
No-one is suggesting that global warming is permanent. What is unstoppable is the current warming effect. This means that we are almost certainly going to have to deal with centuries or millenia of increased temperatures, rather than decades.
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. The answer is to change technologies to those that produce less CO2. Expensive, but less expensive than the consequences of global warming.
But hell lets blame everything but the SUN. Which by the way has been getting hotter lately.
No it hasn't.
Not to mention have been in a hugely active solar flare cycle.
Which has absolutely no effect whatsoever, other than to cause intense aurorae - thanks to the Earth's magnetic fields.
But hell why would we take our main source of life and energy on the earth into account?
we have.
Because maybe you would have to deal with the facts...
Like all that human-produced CO2 in the atmosphere?
Maybe science can be twisted and used as a tool for the environmentalisst.
Or ignored by those who don't want to face the truth.
... so there is little change in sea level when it melts.
Some of the ice within the Artic circle is NOT floating - the Greenland ice, for example.
We really have a huge lack of evidence about global warming. The earth is warming yes, but are we causing it?
:)
It would be odd if pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere had no effect, wouldn't it?
The eart has gone to drastic changes over the course of several million years. Within the past 10,000 years, glaicers have formed and receeded in northern Europe and North America. Not too long ago, Chicago was covered in ice. It's why there is so much good farm land up near Indiana.
How is this relevant? During most of that period there were not that many people around (a few millions at most) and they lived tough lives. Now we have hundreds of millions living within a few metres of sea level, and we rely on subtle aspects of rainfall and climate to grow our food. Even a minor climate change could have a dramatic and very unpleasant effect.
The fact is that humans, even with all our pollution, can't put a dent in our planets ecosystem compared to the power of one rhylothetic (sp?) volcanic eruption
I can't check what you mean because of the spelling
However, we are having an impact. In a few decades we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - that is a major change.
On top of this, many geologists believe that we are currently in an Ice Age and we're on the cooling side of it!
We were on the cooling side of it!
"Even a moderate (few metres) rise in sea level will start to inundate the homes of millions in every country."
What about Bolivia and Nepal, you insensitive clod!
Floods don't just happen in countries at sea level. Global warming will change rainfall patterns and melt glaciers. For example, Nepal is likely to have serious water problems - periods of excess and drought.
Hyperbole is much easier than reasonable discussion.
Flippant denial that there is a problem is worse.
Life will continue on, and we'll adapt. Okay? :-)
No, not OK. Two words illustrate my point: Hurricane Katrina.
Most countries have built major cities very close to sea level. Even slightly increased temperatures will increase the ferocity of storms and sea surges. Even a moderate (few metres) rise in sea level will start to inundate the homes of millions in every country.
Of course life will continue on. We will be forced to adapt. But it is almost certain to be be distinctly unpleasant, with floods, famines, and major political and economic problems across the world. The next generation is going to have a hard time.
I have easily 20-30 languages installed on my several workstations, most of them not boasting great portability yet running just fine. The only language ever to refuse point blank to install and run on 75% of the attempted platforms is Java, the alleged run-anywhere language. Java's problems *in practice* exceed those of any other language I've used (and that's many dozens of them), by an order of magnitude.
As I have had the exact opposite experience - Java running with virtually no problems across a wide range of platforms, I would be curious to know what the problems are.
It is interesting to note that major Java applications - NetBeans, Tomcat, JBoss - have no problems running exactly the same code on a wide range of platforms - indeed, NetBeans - a Sun product - will run fine on other companies Java implementations - even clean-room (non-Sun code) ones like HP's.
No, like NUnit has done in the .NET world for years. (You know, the platform where Sun got the idea for annotation from in the first place.)
.Net even existed.
Java has had Javadoc annotations for years before
Don't think I'm not for Unit Testing. Believe me, I'm an advocate of it here at work. In any situation we can (typically our libraries), we have unit tests with JUnit. But it just does not work when:
- you have complex web GUI that cannot be emulated with test frame work.
- you have complex database schema backing your application.
It certainly can work in those situations, as developers have been doing this for years.
You can use HTTPUnit to automatically generate http requests, form data, and to validate the results.
As for the database testing - that is often done using sample data in small databases such as HSQLDB.
How do we know the universe is 13.7 billion years old? It was recently discovered that the universe's expansion is accelerating as time goes by.
I think a better way to describe things is that some evidence was recently discovered which may be interpreted as suggesting that the universe's expansion is accelerating. As our understanding of the universe changes frequently (for example, the idea of a Big Bang was controversial when I was young), it seems to me to be too soon to say anything definite. The idea of acceleration is simply this year's/decades's latest theory.
The point that you are missing is that ( and this is a rule of marketing) is that the market leader never mentions the any competitors, but the rest of the companies ALWAYS mention the number one company so that potential consumers will equate their product with the market leader.
Like the way Microsoft never mentions Linux in any of its adverts.
I can't tell if this is simply naivete, or what. Read up on Freon and ozone damage, tobacco companies and lung cancer, etc. There's a long history of fradulent science.
No. There is a long history of fraudulently reporting science, which is another matter entirely. For example, the tobacco companies knew for a long time that tobacco caused cancer - this was established in recent court cases.
You can pay a scientist - or anyone else - to say anything you like, if you've enough money.
Not my definition of a scientist.
What they say, then, is important only if they have credibility as an impartial observer. As most science, these days, is funded by corporations, this is unbelievably scarce. However, paid-for work has zero credibility unless it can be verified by an impartial observer.
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what science is for and how it works. Virtually all scientists do science for one reason - to discover things. They will use whatever funding they can get in order to do this, but this does not result in them producing false results - what would be the point? Corporations pay scientists in order to discover things. If they wanted biased results they could simply make them up! Furthermore, any scientist caught deliberately publishing false or biased data would find their career cut short.
Of course paid-for science (like any other) has to be verified, but to suggest that it has 'zero credibility' is to seriously misrepresent science and scientists.