Western science of course was born out of Christian religion
Nice try. Christians persecuted scientists and others with knowledge. When Queen Isabella told Spanish Moors and Sephardi Jews to convert or leave Spain suffered a massive brain drain, most of the educated in Spain were Jews or Muslims. During the Age of Enlightenment scientific authority started displacing religious authority.
Err, I think you got that confused. How under an atheist world view how does a consciousness (which is usually under such a view a complex anomaly of brain chemistry) live for "all time"?
Under atheism it doesn't but Christians do believe in a soul that is immortal. As one battle cry goes, "Kill them all, let God sort them out." An atheist can't say that, and believe it.
Not all religions preach against killing people. The muslims are told very specifically they must either convert non-believers or kill them.
Citation needed.
Though I'm not Muslim myself I had friends who were and I studied Islam in college. While Muslims are encouraged to convert non-believers, they are also supposed to treat Jews and Christians as brothers of the book.
The soviet union for example and that was an atheist state. I'm not sure if russia still has it but china certainly does and thats hardly run by the religious.
Sure, China executes criminals. The government will even bill the family of the person executed for the cost of the bullet, at least they used to.
I read a paper by some muslim cleric justifying the murdering of civilians in Israel. Jewish babies grow up and everybody is Israel is required to server time in the military.
However not all Israelis are Jews. Israel also has Arab, Christian, and Muslim citizens. There are Arab members of the Knesset, Israeli parliament. There are even Jews for Jesus and Jews for Allah.
No, record low amounts of Arctic ice are due to volcanic activity and a lot of human activity in the north.
Volcanic activity is north of Iceland and is not near Russia. Even your link says "The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice". Here's a map of Gakkel Ridge where the volcanoes are located.
Oh, but recently oceans and atmosphere have been cooling.
Citation needed.
Well, there's still that free gas available at the moment
I suggested that earlier. However someone who said he works in the drilling industry said it was too expensive to try to capture and transport the methane.
It's not a cause for panic, it's something to look into. Even if this change has no global implications, the Arctic is changing in ways that make it very worth keeping an eye on.
I just thought of another possible implication. I wonder if methane acid could form, I'm not a chemist or chemical engineer so I don't know. CO2 is already acidifying the oceans. And that acid eats the shells of shellfish.
a) even if you capture and burn the stuff that's bubbling up, you're still reducing the overall GHG load, but even better, if you
b) capture the effluent CO2, it may be possible to push it into the sediments in replacement for the methane clathrates.
What's even better is to reform the methane into hydrogen.
If, in the end, the increased wealth that CO2 emissions bring you allows you to clean up practices that are polluting and you save more lives than global warming costs, the emissions are worth it even if the most dire of global warming predictions are true.
What increased wealth that CO2 emissions create? The increase in poison ivy? The reduction in the growth rates of other plants. The increase in cooling costs? Drought in some places while others flood?
Now with all of the methane under the permafrost in Siberia, if an efficient method to capture it can be devised, Russia could become the Saudi Arabia of methane.
which is a truly wonderful plan. Honestly, it is!
If the methane can effective captured it would be good. Methane is 20 tymes more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas but by burning it CO2 will be released. Hydrogen can also be made from methane by reforming it.
But could you answer one small question - what's the technology you're going to use for capture of this methane.
That's the hangup, capturing the methane. Here's some researchers extracting methane from permafrost. I read some tyme ago about a Russian oil company working on a way to capture methane.
I get quizzed on the potential of exploiting methane clathrates almost every time I go off to do my work - drilling oil wells.
This brings up something I don't understand, oil companies burn off methane where they drill and pump, those flares. Is that because it's difficult and or expensive to transport?
look at the tar-sands which are just starting to come on-stream and be significant
Doesn't the tar-sands, at least in Alberta, require a lot of water and energy to heat the water?
coal production is falling through the floor
Though I'd love to see that the US has 100s of years of coal, at least the way we're using today. I don't know how long it will last if it's gasified and used for purposes other than power plants.
Warming, for all its predicted deleterious effects, would potentially thaw out land that is currently unproductive for food crops.
Warming would also take land out of agricultural production. Some land that's now used for growing crops will become deserts. Other areas will become flooded. Especially with saltwater. As it is now, Southern California is a major source of produce. However all those crops get their water from the Colorado River, which is drying up. As another/.er has posted a number of tymes, people in Colorado can't even use cisterns to capture and store rainwater without a license or permit as people downstream already have "rights" to that water. Farmers in a desert have more "rights" to rainwater than those who live where it rains?
I can see your economic education has been dismally incomplete.
And yours is compleat? The book "Natural Capitalism", called by Frances Cairncross, a writer for the Economist and others as breaming with ideas to bridge the gulf between business and the environment. Some have said it's the followup to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". In it a number of studies are cited whereby businesses have reduced their ecological footprint and saved money at the same tyme. Environmental responsibility can even be traced back to Adam Smith the father of capitalism.
You're making the assumption that this climate change -- if it even exists
Even skeptics of human induced global warming admit the world is warming. Heck even President Bush said it was real.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
And I'm sure you're right. There are still people who believe the Earth is flat. Those people are a decided minority.
Just as those who deny Global Warming is false is a decided minority. To me there's little difference, both discount or ignore facts. Yes, there are facts showing cooling in some places, but the world as a whole is warming.
I oppose agri-subsidies, especially now that bumper crops can be diverted out of the food chain to supply fuel. The free market doesn't get subsidized. That's corporatism, technically economic fascism.
Agreed. I oppose almost all subsidies, I haven't seen one I supported everything else being equal. I do support subsidies for alternative energy sources but only because other energy sources get subsidies as well. If coal, hydro, nuclear, and petroleum weren't subsidized then I wouldn't support subsidies for alternatives either.
As it is, subsidies were only supposed to be temporary. But they have become a perpetual motion machine, every year they keep being given. And given in larger and larger amounts.
Wouldn't you feel like a complete fool if all of humanity cut back on carbon emissions and exacerbated a cooling trend? Billions could die if this were to come true.
That can be turned on it's head too. If Global Warming is true then many can die or become ill, forget about flooding of lowlands. With a warmer world for instance malaria carrying mosquitoes can go to higher altitudes as well as latitudes. Ebola is probably the same. With higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere poison ivy grows faster as well. Unfortunately I haven't found a reference but I once read about a science study that concluded melting ice in a caldera could form a lake increases the chances of an eruption. I'm sure many other things like these can happen as well.
Second, what if warming isn't man-made? What if the planet is getting warmer due to solar activity, or planetary magnetic fields flipping, or any of the other non-anthropocentric theories?
I can't answer about the others here but "Sun's Power Hits New Low". Unfortunately this can make Global Warming pale in comparison. Like in the movie "The Core" the earth could bake though from cosmic rays instead of solar winds.
Ruining a global economy (or even a national one) might be worth it if there was a positive climactic change, but it's certainly not worth it if there is no measurable effect.
Why do people automatically assume doing something about Global Warming will hurt the global economy? Doing something about Global Warming can actually help the economy. Renewable energy can create a lot of well paying jobs. People will be employed in R&D, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of alternative energy sources. While I don't really like some of what Obama wants I do like his push on green collar jobs. And what of the trillions insurance companies can lose as well? How many billions will New Orleans cost? What about Texas? What about a volcanic eruption?
You're claiming something extraordinary is on the way and that I should take extraordinary measures to offset it. I'm asking for extraordinary proof.
And methane farts, er burbs, aren't enough, on top of a melting North Pole and Greenland's glaciers?
While you're at it, submit a counter-argument to those who disagree with you, one that contains a point-by-point proof of where their models fail. Submit it for rigorous peer review. When you've got it to the point where no reputable, knowledgeable climatologist will disagree with it, I'm on board.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
For us middle-class first worlders a tick up or down isn't a big deal but getting out of grinding subsistence agriculture and moving up the ladder to a merely crappy factory job means the difference between losing one sibling or three in the 3rd world.
What to keep more of the money you work to earn, and help the population in the Third World? Force government to stop giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and other agricultural businesses. This year alone congress approved a $280 Billion farm bill by a veto proof margin. With these subsidies ADM and Cargill can export food to the Third World to sale it there for less than Third World farmers can grow food. Other First World nations are just as bad as the US. Australia, Canada, the EU, and Japan give large subsidies as well.
There are some research projects and operations in the use of biogas as an energysource. Now with all of the methane under the permafrost in Siberia, if an efficient method to capture it can be devised, Russia could become the Saudi Arabia of methane.
If you don't care about environmental impacts then I bet coal and gas fired power plants can be built faster than nuclear power plants. These studies are done for a reason though.
None of which are good for base load. If wind turbines can survive in the open marketplace (i.e. no government handouts like Pickens wants) who am I to question the invisible hand. But I wouldn't put down a major bet they could compete against nukes if nukes were given a chance.
People use France as an example of how nuclear power can compeat but even there the government subsidies nuclear power. According to one person how much nuclear power in France is subsidized is a "state secrete". The French nuclear power giant Areva is government owned, and will be compeating with US companies for US subsidies. Areva also may have some problems.
I won't be voting for McCain. Like most elections I will be voting against the Democratic Socialist Party's candidate.
I'm not voting for McCain either, if Bob Barr is not on the ballot I don't know if I will vote for anyone for President, I've left blanks on ballots before. As for your vote, please vote for whom you want to be president and not against, I'm guessing Obama. I did that in 2000 when I picked Gross, er Gore. I didn't want a Gore president but a Bush president was worse to me. After that vote I swore I would not vote against someone again.
You wont get much gain from any investment in alternative energy for years to come...
Exactly. Which is why we need to be building nuke plants NOW and working out ways to ramp up the fuel supply while keeping a close handle of the extra fissile material that will entail and ramming Yucca Mountain into operation.
Nuke power is even slower. To produce 1 gigawatt of power, 20 5 megawatt wind turbines can be erected a month for 10 months. A 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant will takes years to build. Need more energy, erect 50 wind turbines a month every month. You'd have 250 megawatts come online every month, 3 gigawatts a year.
Longer term we do need a better answer and should be working on that, but let the market pick the winner
Here's where nuclear power would really lose, the market will not finance nuclear power plants without government help. And McCain has called to spend billions in subsidies to build nuclear power plants.
We looked into geothermal, but it was prohibitively expensive - the drilling alone would have been $20-25k (we don't have the land for horizontal trenches, so we'd have to drill vertical wells).
IMHO, it's energy *storage* that matters more than generation.
Storage only matters much in Off grid situations. Individual grid intertied systems don't need storage. Of course with a significant increase in intertied systems then storage may become an issue.
there's no practical way of storing the generated energy to use later.
Sure there is, many of those off grid depend on storage and use battery banks.
Slashdot Mirror
Western science of course was born out of Christian religion
Nice try. Christians persecuted scientists and others with knowledge. When Queen Isabella told Spanish Moors and Sephardi Jews to convert or leave Spain suffered a massive brain drain, most of the educated in Spain were Jews or Muslims. During the Age of Enlightenment scientific authority started displacing religious authority.
Err, I think you got that confused. How under an atheist world view how does a consciousness (which is usually under such a view a complex anomaly of brain chemistry) live for "all time"?
Under atheism it doesn't but Christians do believe in a soul that is immortal. As one battle cry goes, "Kill them all, let God sort them out." An atheist can't say that, and believe it.
Falcon
Not all religions preach against killing people. The muslims are told very specifically they must either convert non-believers or kill them.
Citation needed.
Though I'm not Muslim myself I had friends who were and I studied Islam in college. While Muslims are encouraged to convert non-believers, they are also supposed to treat Jews and Christians as brothers of the book.
Fslcon
The soviet union for example and that was an atheist state. I'm not sure if russia still has it but china certainly does and thats hardly run by the religious.
Sure, China executes criminals. The government will even bill the family of the person executed for the cost of the bullet, at least they used to.
Falcon
I read a paper by some muslim cleric justifying the murdering of civilians in Israel. Jewish babies grow up and everybody is Israel is required to server time in the military.
However not all Israelis are Jews. Israel also has Arab, Christian, and Muslim citizens. There are Arab members of the Knesset, Israeli parliament. There are even Jews for Jesus and Jews for Allah.
Falcon
It seems there might be a better match when looking at solar activity
"Sun's Power Hits New Low".
Falcon
No, record low amounts of Arctic ice are due to volcanic activity and a lot of human activity in the north.
Volcanic activity is north of Iceland and is not near Russia. Even your link says "The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice". Here's a map of Gakkel Ridge where the volcanoes are located.
Falcon
Oh, but recently oceans and atmosphere have been cooling.
Citation needed.
Well, there's still that free gas available at the moment
I suggested that earlier. However someone who said he works in the drilling industry said it was too expensive to try to capture and transport the methane.
Falcon
Cripes. You think the scientists studying these plumes just might have noticed nearby volcanos when constructing hypotheses?
Except the volcanoes are not near Russia. If volcanoes were the cause then why aren't methane vents near the volcanoes?
Falcon
It's not a cause for panic, it's something to look into. Even if this change has no global implications, the Arctic is changing in ways that make it very worth keeping an eye on.
I just thought of another possible implication. I wonder if methane acid could form, I'm not a chemist or chemical engineer so I don't know. CO2 is already acidifying the oceans. And that acid eats the shells of shellfish.
Falcon
Huh. I thought that was Tesla's work?
He did like making ball lightening and earthquakes.
Falcon
Last year Italian scientists found what they thought was a crater.
Falcon
We're advising all our customers to put everything they have into canned foods and shotguns.
"Alas, Babylon".
Falcon
a) even if you capture and burn the stuff that's bubbling up, you're still reducing the overall GHG load, but even better, if you
b) capture the effluent CO2, it may be possible to push it into the sediments in replacement for the methane clathrates.
What's even better is to reform the methane into hydrogen.
Falcon
If, in the end, the increased wealth that CO2 emissions bring you allows you to clean up practices that are polluting and you save more lives than global warming costs, the emissions are worth it even if the most dire of global warming predictions are true.
What increased wealth that CO2 emissions create? The increase in poison ivy? The reduction in the growth rates of other plants. The increase in cooling costs? Drought in some places while others flood?
Falcon
Now with all of the methane under the permafrost in Siberia, if an efficient method to capture it can be devised, Russia could become the Saudi Arabia of methane.
which is a truly wonderful plan. Honestly, it is!
If the methane can effective captured it would be good. Methane is 20 tymes more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas but by burning it CO2 will be released. Hydrogen can also be made from methane by reforming it.
But could you answer one small question - what's the technology you're going to use for capture of this methane.
That's the hangup, capturing the methane. Here's some researchers extracting methane from permafrost. I read some tyme ago about a Russian oil company working on a way to capture methane.
I get quizzed on the potential of exploiting methane clathrates almost every time I go off to do my work - drilling oil wells.
This brings up something I don't understand, oil companies burn off methane where they drill and pump, those flares. Is that because it's difficult and or expensive to transport?
look at the tar-sands which are just starting to come on-stream and be significant
Doesn't the tar-sands, at least in Alberta, require a lot of water and energy to heat the water?
coal production is falling through the floor
Though I'd love to see that the US has 100s of years of coal, at least the way we're using today. I don't know how long it will last if it's gasified and used for purposes other than power plants.
Falcon
Warming, for all its predicted deleterious effects, would potentially thaw out land that is currently unproductive for food crops.
Warming would also take land out of agricultural production. Some land that's now used for growing crops will become deserts. Other areas will become flooded. Especially with saltwater. As it is now, Southern California is a major source of produce. However all those crops get their water from the Colorado River, which is drying up. As another /.er has posted a number of tymes, people in Colorado can't even use cisterns to capture and store rainwater without a license or permit as people downstream already have "rights" to that water. Farmers in a desert have more "rights" to rainwater than those who live where it rains?
I can see your economic education has been dismally incomplete.
And yours is compleat? The book "Natural Capitalism", called by Frances Cairncross, a writer for the Economist and others as breaming with ideas to bridge the gulf between business and the environment. Some have said it's the followup to Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations". In it a number of studies are cited whereby businesses have reduced their ecological footprint and saved money at the same tyme. Environmental responsibility can even be traced back to Adam Smith the father of capitalism.
You're making the assumption that this climate change -- if it even exists
Even skeptics of human induced global warming admit the world is warming. Heck even President Bush said it was real.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
And I'm sure you're right. There are still people who believe the Earth is flat. Those people are a decided minority.
Just as those who deny Global Warming is false is a decided minority. To me there's little difference, both discount or ignore facts. Yes, there are facts showing cooling in some places, but the world as a whole is warming.
Falcon
I oppose agri-subsidies, especially now that bumper crops can be diverted out of the food chain to supply fuel. The free market doesn't get subsidized. That's corporatism, technically economic fascism.
Agreed. I oppose almost all subsidies, I haven't seen one I supported everything else being equal. I do support subsidies for alternative energy sources but only because other energy sources get subsidies as well. If coal, hydro, nuclear, and petroleum weren't subsidized then I wouldn't support subsidies for alternatives either.
As it is, subsidies were only supposed to be temporary. But they have become a perpetual motion machine, every year they keep being given. And given in larger and larger amounts.
Falcon
Wouldn't you feel like a complete fool if all of humanity cut back on carbon emissions and exacerbated a cooling trend? Billions could die if this were to come true.
That can be turned on it's head too. If Global Warming is true then many can die or become ill, forget about flooding of lowlands. With a warmer world for instance malaria carrying mosquitoes can go to higher altitudes as well as latitudes. Ebola is probably the same. With higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere poison ivy grows faster as well. Unfortunately I haven't found a reference but I once read about a science study that concluded melting ice in a caldera could form a lake increases the chances of an eruption. I'm sure many other things like these can happen as well.
Second, what if warming isn't man-made? What if the planet is getting warmer due to solar activity, or planetary magnetic fields flipping, or any of the other non-anthropocentric theories?
I can't answer about the others here but "Sun's Power Hits New Low". Unfortunately this can make Global Warming pale in comparison. Like in the movie "The Core" the earth could bake though from cosmic rays instead of solar winds.
Ruining a global economy (or even a national one) might be worth it if there was a positive climactic change, but it's certainly not worth it if there is no measurable effect.
Why do people automatically assume doing something about Global Warming will hurt the global economy? Doing something about Global Warming can actually help the economy. Renewable energy can create a lot of well paying jobs. People will be employed in R&D, manufacturing, installation and maintenance of alternative energy sources. While I don't really like some of what Obama wants I do like his push on green collar jobs. And what of the trillions insurance companies can lose as well? How many billions will New Orleans cost? What about Texas? What about a volcanic eruption?
You're claiming something extraordinary is on the way and that I should take extraordinary measures to offset it. I'm asking for extraordinary proof.
And methane farts, er burbs, aren't enough, on top of a melting North Pole and Greenland's glaciers?
While you're at it, submit a counter-argument to those who disagree with you, one that contains a point-by-point proof of where their models fail. Submit it for rigorous peer review. When you've got it to the point where no reputable, knowledgeable climatologist will disagree with it, I'm on board.
I bet even the day after you won't get 100% agreement, being afterwards, on the cause.
For us middle-class first worlders a tick up or down isn't a big deal but getting out of grinding subsistence agriculture and moving up the ladder to a merely crappy factory job means the difference between losing one sibling or three in the 3rd world.
What to keep more of the money you work to earn, and help the population in the Third World? Force government to stop giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and other agricultural businesses. This year alone congress approved a $280 Billion farm bill by a veto proof margin. With these subsidies ADM and Cargill can export food to the Third World to sale it there for less than Third World farmers can grow food. Other First World nations are just as bad as the US. Australia, Canada, the EU, and Japan give large subsidies as well.
Falcon
There are some research projects and operations in the use of biogas as an energy source. Now with all of the methane under the permafrost in Siberia, if an efficient method to capture it can be devised, Russia could become the Saudi Arabia of methane.
Falcon
no environmental impact studies
If you don't care about environmental impacts then I bet coal and gas fired power plants can be built faster than nuclear power plants. These studies are done for a reason though.
None of which are good for base load. If wind turbines can survive in the open marketplace (i.e. no government handouts like Pickens wants) who am I to question the invisible hand. But I wouldn't put down a major bet they could compete against nukes if nukes were given a chance.
People use France as an example of how nuclear power can compeat but even there the government subsidies nuclear power. According to one person how much nuclear power in France is subsidized is a "state secrete". The French nuclear power giant Areva is government owned, and will be compeating with US companies for US subsidies. Areva also may have some problems.
I won't be voting for McCain. Like most elections I will be voting against the Democratic Socialist Party's candidate.
I'm not voting for McCain either, if Bob Barr is not on the ballot I don't know if I will vote for anyone for President, I've left blanks on ballots before. As for your vote, please vote for whom you want to be president and not against, I'm guessing Obama. I did that in 2000 when I picked Gross, er Gore. I didn't want a Gore president but a Bush president was worse to me. After that vote I swore I would not vote against someone again.
Falcon
The going rate is $12-15 per foot. We'd need an estimated eight 200' wells.
WOW! That's a lot, of money and wells.
Falcon
You wont get much gain from any investment in alternative energy for years to come...
Exactly. Which is why we need to be building nuke plants NOW and working out ways to ramp up the fuel supply while keeping a close handle of the extra fissile material that will entail and ramming Yucca Mountain into operation.
Nuke power is even slower. To produce 1 gigawatt of power, 20 5 megawatt wind turbines can be erected a month for 10 months. A 1 gigawatt nuclear power plant will takes years to build. Need more energy, erect 50 wind turbines a month every month. You'd have 250 megawatts come online every month, 3 gigawatts a year.
Longer term we do need a better answer and should be working on that, but let the market pick the winner
Here's where nuclear power would really lose, the market will not finance nuclear power plants without government help. And McCain has called to spend billions in subsidies to build nuclear power plants.
Falcon
We looked into geothermal, but it was prohibitively expensive - the drilling alone would have been $20-25k (we don't have the land for horizontal trenches, so we'd have to drill vertical wells).
Okay. I didn't think drilling would cost so much.
Falcon
IMHO, it's energy *storage* that matters more than generation.
Storage only matters much in Off grid situations. Individual grid intertied systems don't need storage. Of course with a significant increase in intertied systems then storage may become an issue.
there's no practical way of storing the generated energy to use later.
Sure there is, many of those off grid depend on storage and use battery banks.
Falcon