Scylla and Charybdis were mythical sea monsters noted by Homer; later Greek tradition sited them on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Scylla was rationalized as a rock shoal (described as a six-headed sea monster) on the Italian side of the strait and Charybdis was a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. They were regarded as a sea hazard located close enough to each other that they posed an inescapable threat to passing sailors; avoiding Charybdis meant passing too close to Scylla and vice versa. From Wikipedia.
By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article on global warming. For those who haven't, here is the argument in a nutshell:
We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn. We'd have to keep 80 percent of those reserves locked away underground to avoid that fate. [...] Yes, this coal and gas and oil is still technically in the soil. But it's already economically aboveground – it's figured into share prices, companies are borrowing money against it, nations are basing their budgets on the presumed returns from their patrimony. [...] Which is to say, if you paid attention to the scientists and kept 80 percent of it underground, you'd be writing off $20 trillion in assets. The numbers aren't exact, of course, but that carbon bubble makes the housing bubble look small by comparison. It won't necessarily burst – we might well burn all that carbon, in which case investors will do fine. But if we do, the planet will crater.
I'll say it here: before I read this article, I was a mild skeptic on global warming. Given the inherent nature of weather simulations, it is very difficult to conclusively link micro-scale weather effects (a mega-hurricane or an extended drought) to a macro-scale climate effect--which is why I sometimes found doom-and-gloom predictions by climate scientists to be PR stunts.
This article (and follow-on reading I was inspired to do) changed my mind.
I think that it makes sense that pumping an additional 5x of the carbon we've already pumped would create unacceptable risks to the global climate and weather, because we're not talking percentage increases anymore--we're talking nearly an order of magnitude here. The problem is that our global economy already has borrowed and IPO'd on the basis that we will use that additional 2795 gigatons of carbon. Oops. This is like someone telling you that you will probably get busted by the cops for dealing out the rest of the coke stash you have at your house, but you've already maxed out all your credit cards on the assumption that you can sell the drugs.
But the solution the article proposes bothers me too. Bill McKibben (the author) seems to think that we should just go cold turkey on carbon emissions and bite the 20 trillion dollar bullet early, before more damage is done to the global climate. (That, and tar energy companies as public enemies.) I think this is a bad idea, because 20 trillion dollars is a lot of money. This is an amazingly simple argument, but due to how the world economy is structured today, one that also carries quite a number of complex consequences.
To put this in perspective, let's look at how a similar asset forfeiture impacted the global economy: the subprime mortgage crisis.
The subprime crisis was triggered by an uptick in default rates among US housing mortgages from about 5-7% from 2004-2006 to 14.4% by 2008. US housing mortgages are a ~$9 trillion dollar market by asset value. So when 9% of a 9 trillion dollar market--around $800 billion of assets--went up in risk profile from prime or subprime to "default", it was enough to trigger an implosion in the global financial system.
The underlying asset decline that triggered this was around a 3 trillion dollar decline in home equity values from 2006 to 2008 (we are not considering the further 2 trillion dollar decline that came after the financial system had a Minsky moment, as those would fall into "follow-on" effects rather than triggering causes.)
So a 3 trillion dollar asset write-off, or a reclassification of risk across $800 billion in assets, was enough to send the world economy into a tailspin that dragged down the US and the EU, and forced China to sink to its eyeballs in debt to keep its economy afloat.
20 trillion dollars is around 6.6 times 3 trillion dollars. The asset writeoff by expunging carbon assets from the world's balance sheet would strain the world financial system, and by extension the world economy, more than 6 times as much as the housing bubble. This is crazy--it would be a 1929-level event, made all the worse because unlike investment into economically useless paper assets or empty houses, investment into carbon energy produces real economic benefits. (Think of all the possible uses of an additional barrel of oil--now think of all the possible uses of an additional ranch house on the outskirts of Las Vegas.) Put simply, an action like this would cost the world a decade, if not more, of depression, possible hyperinflation, and severe risks of economic collapse and political instability (read: riots, revolutions, and Lil' Hitler.)
But then this got me thinking as well: 20 trillion is a lot of money. Doesn't that mean there should be plenty of reasons to tax carbon production to a certain extent, and then divert that to funding projects which offset global warming? Planting trees could be one, but I was thinking large-scale mega-engineering projects which generate new technologies and actually offer a third way out of the impending crisis.
If Odysseus had used one of these things, Homer could have shortened his story by 2/3rds, and I wouldn't have nearly failed AP Junior English.
It really boils down to two questions here:
Out of that 20 trillion in carbon assets, how much are willing to tax against it to invest into geo-engineering mega-projects?
What are the chances that one of the mega-projects will succeed in making a meaningful impact on global warming?
I'm a tech optimist at heart, which means my gut feelings towards both these questions are pretty sanguine. But I also realize that this topic is extremely complex and ripe for discussion. Given how many smart/educated/just plain opinionated people browse this forum every day, I want to pose the question to all of you, in addition to the two specific questions above:
Could we do it? Could we find a third way out of the crisis, or will we have to choose between the Scylla of another Great Depression and the Charybdis of climate change? And if we have to choose, which would you rather have?
Poll: Can we find a third way out of the carbon asset crunch?
We can't do it, but I'd rather have a Great Depression (69)
55%
We can do it/I have an idea as to how (31)
25%
We can't do it, but I'd rather have a six-degree shift in the world climate (25)
20%
125 total votes
Your vote: Can we find a third way out of the carbon asset crunch?
(Vote): We can't do it, but I'd rather have a Great Depression (Vote): We can't do it, but I'd rather have a six-degree shift in the world climate (Vote): We can do it/I have an idea as to how
I'm not an expert on these subjects, but as a piece of advice towards anything in life, anything is possible, and everything has a solution, some are just harder to find.
This is a problem of psychology. Specifically, it's a problem of incentives. Too many people gain too much by denying global warming, or by affirming it but continuing to act (and vote) as if it doesn't exist. And these same people lose too little. As the thinking goes, "Who cares if the planet goes to shit in 100 years? I'll be gone long before then. Better have fun while I can!"
Think about it -- average people are too short-sighted to wear seatbelts, eat healthily, do good in school, get checked for colon cancer, drive slowly, wear condoms, etc. And these are all things that will help YOU in YOUR lifetime. There is absolutely no way we're going to get people to make large personal sacrifices to curb problems that they likely won't live to see the effects of. No way, period. People aren't going to pay attention to this kind of shit until the effects of global warming are so bad that they counter-balance the benefits of using energy like it's limitless. And, of course, at that point, it will be too late.
It's worth speculating on how we got to this point. I blame evolution. Compared to the scale of macro-changes on the earth, we're a short-lived species. Natural selection only helped us get to the point at which we could reproduce and raise a kid, which is about 20 years of life. So we're biased to worry about immediate dangers like tigers and bears. If we were a longer-lived species, maybe we'd have a chance of caring about things as long-term as healthy eating and global warming. But we're not. Evolution was good enough to get us to the point where we can take over the Earth, but not good enough to get us to the point where we can leave the Earth.
The other thing to blame is democracy, or -- as Winston Churchill put it -- the worst damn system except every other system. If the world was run by one all-powerful dictator, or family, or dynasty, they could just decree that we're going to pay attention to this shit. And their word would be law. Theoretically, they could also have enough power to help curb the significant economic side effects. But of course, the danger if giving this much power to any one individual is that they could use it to do significant harm as well. A democracy is only as smart and responsible as its people. I've always said the best government would be a benevolent dictatorship...
On July 26 2012 14:45 Courthead wrote: This is a problem of psychology. Specifically, it's a problem of incentives. Too many people gain too much by denying global warming, or by affirming it but continuing to act (and vote) as if it doesn't exist. And these same people lose too little. As the thinking goes, "Who cares if the planet goes to shit in 100 years? I'll be gone long before then. Better have fun while I can!"
Think about it -- average people are too short-sighted to wear seatbelts, eat healthily, do good in school, get checked for colon cancer, drive slowly, wear condoms, etc. And these are all things that will help YOU in YOUR lifetime. There is absolutely no way we're going to get people to make large personal sacrifices to curb problems that they likely won't live to see the effects of. No way, period. People aren't going to pay attention to this kind of shit until the effects of global warming are so bad that they counter-balance the benefits of using energy like it's limitless. And, of course, at that point, it will be too late.
It's worth speculating on how we got to this point. I blame evolution. Compared to the scale of macro-changes on the earth, we're a short-lived species. Natural selection only helped us get to the point at which we could reproduce and raise a kid, which is about 20 years of life. So we're biased to worry about immediate dangers like tigers and bears. If we were a longer-lived species, maybe we'd have a chance of caring about things as long-term as healthy eating and global warming. But we're not.
Long-story short, our evolution was good enough to get us to the point where we can take over the earth. But not good enough to get us to the point where we can take over the universe.
Perhaps. But evolution was also what gave our ancestors enough of a sense of social responsibility to raise each others' kids and not auto-kill a neighboring tribe when encountered, even if the neighbors were strangers. It is also what gave us enough of a sense of moral responsibility to come up with religion and society-wide standards of conduct, and adopt crazy self-sacrificing behavior--think charging across artillery bombardment as a 16-year-old virgin and dying like a maggot atop a firecracker.
It's preposterous to think that we will destroy the planet. Yes, global warming will have an immense effect on agricultural yields. Yes, quite a few species will become extinct. Many human populations will suffer from its effects, but there are too many humans on Earth anyway.
But life on Earth has endured much greater challenges than the Holocene extinction. Events such as the Great Oxygenation or the Permian-Triassic extinction wiped out almost all the life on Earth. Nothing happening now or in the near future will come close to approaching those events.
The only concern here is weighing the costs of adapting to global warming versus the costs of mitigating it.
To prevent this thread from derailing as extremely as every other climate change thread on TL, we should get either a mod note or an OP edit that explicitly states that this thread is exclusively for discussing a cost benefit analysis that assumes the correctness of the science in the Rolling Stone article.
There is already a thread for the deniers, and if we let them in here it will be the only thing discussed.
I'd suggest people read about our options in terms of altering the climate with macroengineering.
My main concern with these projects is how little we understand the climate. We can hardly agree on the magnitude of the effect of global warming, so trying to engineer something to counteract it is even harder.
I'm not really happy with any of the proposed solutions, but in my opinion, the best chance we have is a biological approach. We know that life has had a huge impact on the climate, so it's sort of "proven" to be effective on a global scale, and the cost is more attainable than some of the other solutions (especially the space-based ones). We have a huge number of natural experiments to look at. Genetics and computing power is at a point where we can make reasonably informed adjustments, and those are some of the fastest-growing fields.
There's one side effect of a global engineering project that I think is unavoidable: a lot of things will die. Species are already going extinct at a rate of 150-200/day, last I heard, and wrenching the climate around is not going to help matters at all. We're probably going to have to accept that the animal world will end up pretty boring, whether we succeed or fail.
In any case, I think it's something we will be forced to do eventually, if we want the growth of civilization to continue. We might be able to ignore the issue and survive, but that's hardly a long-term solution. And geoengineering is pretty much the key to being able to colonize another planet, if we ever get there.
In my own opinion, the safest, most cost efficient way that can satisfy both sides of the argument would be to create machineries that can either react to carbon emissions and change it to something harmless to the environment.
To modify the economy or to completely ignore the issue are the last thing you want to do tbh. Either way, you will end up with a loss, monetary or environmental wise.
One of the wonderful things about world economics is that they are (for the most part) self righting
At some point in the future, >we know< that energy is an issue, and as a public we have pretty much forced (whether correct or not) the idea of greater externalities onto the world of the energy industry (which is what allows the great monstrosities that are wind farms to even exist)
One would hope that a great technological push towards energy generation is clearly the path for the future. Though of course, in some ways we are also being held back by the public who in general, doesn't know shit. For a start, nuclear energy is probably the most shunned of all energy production, yet it is the only form of energy where every externality ranging from potential risks, costs, and all waste and emissions produced, are directly factored into the cost and production of the plant and into the energy it produces.
Eventually, if there is a shortage, some forms of energy become more and more expensive, and simply too unwieldy, making more technologically efficient solutions (such as nuclear and fusion) more commercially viable
The big problem with a gradual change driven by appropriate taxes and investment in new technologies is that we probably should have started 20 years ago.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
Yeah I like to get all my science knowledge from a music magazine too unoriginal to even think up its own name.
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
On July 26 2012 15:43 BrTarolg wrote: One of the wonderful things about world economics is that they are (for the most part) self righting
At some point in the future, >we know< that energy is an issue, and as a public we have pretty much forced (whether correct or not) the idea of greater externalities onto the world of the energy industry (which is what allows the great monstrosities that are wind farms to even exist)
One would hope that a great technological push towards energy generation is clearly the path for the future. Though of course, in some ways we are also being held back by the public who in general, doesn't know shit. For a start, nuclear energy is probably the most shunned of all energy production, yet it is the only form of energy where every externality ranging from potential risks, costs, and all waste and emissions produced, are directly factored into the cost and production of the plant and into the energy it produces.
Eventually, if there is a shortage, some forms of energy become more and more expensive, and simply too unwieldy, making more technologically efficient solutions (such as nuclear and fusion) more commercially viable
the way that the Mayans or the Easter Islanders, once they exhausted their resources, just got together and invented a whole new mode of economic growth right? People can lock into an economic cycle out of which they exit only after the collapse, but the actual collapse is so devastating that they are never again able to rebuild any kind of semblance of growth.
But still, we all live in the moment and the future is difficult for most people to image so why bother? The world is doomed. At least we all go out together. Of course 'we', we all know that the developed world citizens will still come off better than their developing world counter parts but that is the price of victory in the real game of civilization. Actually -- I am kind of waiting for some nut to come out and say the logical interpretation of the observation that 7 billion cannot live the way the developed world lives now: that for the developed world to continue to enjoy the standard of living we do now the 6 billion in the developing world should be...de-industrialized...
I dunno how practical this idea is - but we could try to terraform the Earth as a way to both solve the climate issue and develop resources for expansion to other planets and satellites in our solar system.
On July 26 2012 16:03 FinestHour wrote: im not very familiar with how magazine articles work, but at the end of the reading it said
This story is from the August 2nd, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.
when its only 7/27/2012, is that intentional? great read though. im passing this along to some other friends
Yeah - periodicals frequently release the next months issue at the end of the current month. I remember I used to get my GameInformer like almost a whole month in advance sometimes.
If we burn all the global reserves of hydrocarbons, the world will be hotter than at any period in known geological history. Although historic CO2 levels in the atmosphere were higher in the Carboniferous period (i.e. all that excess carbon is now in the form of coal), and the climate was significantly warmer then, the sun was only outputting approximately 75% of the energy then that it is now. People don't even know if giant swathes of the earth will become completely uninhabitable if this happens or not.
On July 26 2012 16:04 Arghmyliver wrote: I dunno how practical this idea is - but we could try to terraform the Earth as a way to both solve the climate issue and develop resources for expansion to other planets and satellites in our solar system.
We don't have the technology to 'terraform' the earth in a reasonable amount of time, in any sense of the word terraform that I've ever heard. But presumably 'terraforming' would entail making it such that the atomspheric co2 levels are manageable. The easiest/best way to do this and avoid worst case scenarios it to transition into renewables ASAP. There are orders of magnitude more than enough renewable energy potential to do this.
tldr; if we burn it all, conditions on the earth will be hotter than at any time in geological history when life existed on this planet. we don't have a clue what will happen, we just know it will be very bad. leave it in the ground, anything else is basically insanity.
On July 26 2012 16:09 caradoc wrote: If we burn all the global reserves of hydrocarbons, the world will be hotter than at any period in known geological history. Although historic CO2 levels in the atmosphere were higher in the Carboniferous period (i.e. all that excess carbon is now in the form of coal), and the climate was significantly warmer then, the sun was only outputting approximately 75% of the energy then that it is now. People don't even know if giant swathes of the earth will become completely uninhabitable if this happens or not.
tldr; if we burn it all, conditions on the earth will be hotter than at any time in geological history when life existed on this planet. we don't have a clue what will happen, we just know it will be very bad.
But it goes back to that cocaine analogy. If we don't burn it, a substantial part of the world asset base suddenly becomes worthless. We've already borrowed against that money to fund our current lifestyles. What do we do?
On July 26 2012 16:09 caradoc wrote: If we burn all the global reserves of hydrocarbons, the world will be hotter than at any period in known geological history. Although historic CO2 levels in the atmosphere were higher in the Carboniferous period (i.e. all that excess carbon is now in the form of coal), and the climate was significantly warmer then, the sun was only outputting approximately 75% of the energy then that it is now. People don't even know if giant swathes of the earth will become completely uninhabitable if this happens or not.
tldr; if we burn it all, conditions on the earth will be hotter than at any time in geological history when life existed on this planet. we don't have a clue what will happen, we just know it will be very bad.
But it goes back to that cocaine analogy. If we don't burn it, a substantial part of the world asset base suddenly becomes worthless. We've already borrowed against that money to fund our current lifestyles. What do we do?
honestly, who the fuck cares. we burn it all, there won't be a human society left to care about the money. I'm sure there will be roving bands of humans in a road warrior type scenario or something, but they'll pay for shit with sharpened scrap metal blades and scavenged sawed off shotguns or somethin (tongue partly in cheek)
Puts the 'economy' into perspective doesn't it.
And besides, the profits from burning it largely won't go to society anyways, they go to the corporations that own the reserves. The economy is currently stagnant as a result of profit hoarding and growing wealth inequality, so any economic arguments about it hurting the economy is at best a obfuscation to get us to hesitate rather than putting our efforts into changing shit.
widescale micro-generation handled by co-ops or privately owned small scale projects on the other hand infuses local economies with cash.
On July 26 2012 15:43 BrTarolg wrote: One of the wonderful things about world economics is that they are (for the most part) self righting
That's pretty much bunk. They're not self-righting. They never were self righting. They're not even self-righting in a game like diablo3 where the richest can't even influence the game rules. How are they more righting in a real world scenario where parts of governments can often be bought by corporations?
At some point in the future, >we know< that energy is an issue, and as a public we have pretty much forced (whether correct or not) the idea of greater externalities onto the world of the energy industry (which is what allows the great monstrosities that are wind farms to even exist)
What are you talking about? They're not forced in at all. If they were, the oil would stay in the ground because of global warming. Energy companies, which are among the worlds most powerful/largest/most influential are fighting tooth and nail to fuel the entire climate change denialist movement. The evidence is stronger for anthropogenic climate change than ever before, yet fewer ppl in North America believe it than last year.
Eventually, if there is a shortage, some forms of energy become more and more expensive, and simply too unwieldy, making more technologically efficient solutions (such as nuclear and fusion) more commercially viable
I think the entire point is that the world is fucked long long long before there is a shortage of hydrocarbons.
seeing the votes for another depression already shows how pointless these discussions are. A neuroscientist wouldn't talk about brain surgery with a manual labourer and ask his opinion, similarly asking anywhere on the internet where 95% of people have no idea what the value of a dollar is, or what hard living is, about global economy or finance or anything that has ramifications beyond scope beyond their own life is pointless.
On July 26 2012 16:37 InfernoStarcraft wrote: seeing the votes for another depression already shows how pointless these discussions are. A neuroscientist wouldn't talk about brain surgery with a manual labourer and ask his opinion, similarly asking anywhere on the internet where 95% of people have no idea what the value of a dollar is, or what hard living is, about global economy or finance or anything that has ramifications beyond scope beyond their own life is pointless.
you would talk to a manual laborer about brain surgery if it was his brain being operated on, a depression and global warming will both affect many people, many who are not economists or scientists, or old enough to know what depressions feel like,
Even if you don't understand why others think this way, isn't the point of these topics to inform and express opinions in hopes other people will see and perhaps think about what your saying? If you find a lot of people hold an opinion contrary to yours, take it as a platform for you to back up your beliefs, or perhaps come to understand the beliefs of others.
I have to say, very nicely written thread. One encounters plenty of Global warming threads on this site, but I have not encountered a Global Warming OP as thought provoking as this one. I am also reminded of the Police song "wrapped around your finger". Thanks OP.
While you are right about the investments made, it does not mean that there will be an economic collapse when we start using an alternative source of energy. In fact, I think the opposite will happen. History has shown that any big technologic advancement brings a new level of prosperity. Yes, the current oil companies will stop or transition and new companies will arrise. This is not about money, it is about power. The oil companies are making an effort to stop any advancements in energy by buying up companies and patents, and forcing technology to stay at the current level.
We are already past peak oil. So its not really a 20 trillion dollar asset, as oil starts to run out, it will become more expensive and less affordable, its both an infinitely high asset and potentially worthless at the same time.
Money that goes to oil companies does not necessarily go back to the people. If we tax the oil companies so much that they go broke, nothing happens except they go broke. With the subprime mortgage market, the tax was taking money off the general populace, when we tax oil companies, its completely different.
People will end up having to move off cars that use oil, or use public transport anyway because they won't be able to afford to refill their cars after a certain point in time.
What's frustrating is negligence in developing renewable/healthy technologies because the oil companies are paying money to create resistance against reducing our dependence on oil. Oil companies don't give a shit if people get sick from heavily polluted cities, nor if the pollution increases the power/frequency of natural disasters.
The point of taxing oil, is to put a price on environmental damage. Just like a tobacco tax, people die from smoking cigarettes, we make the purchaser offset the money that is taken from the tax payers to fund the hospitals. Likewise, oil companies should have to offset the taxpayer dollars that go into caring for the environment.
we dont burn it, invesments fail. everything collapses. we rebuild. we burn it, invesments fail at a later time since world is not at nice to circulate ever increasing invesments. everything collapse. 1/10we rebuild ,maybe, in a very shity way.
a bigger impact on not burning the fuel accually is not money not returning. If we do not act fast and dont burn it, established industry will slow down. currency is much more managable than supplies. Then again industry would surely take a bigger hit from a climate crisis..
aslo either way bigger issue is war. I think, war over limited and depleting resources woudl be much more longer and merciless compared to economical dominance, which prefers to have your enemy intact to establish dominance over.
Its not that hard to fix economy, 3 generations? maybe 4? I say its a easy call.
Wait so your saying that climate change is caused by the carbon that is in the ground...and when it's all burnt we will have a fucked up climate?
There is 20trillion $s worth of Carbon in the ground waiting to be used and that would take a long time? I would not know how long it would take us to burn all that and let alone find it all. But we have been working on different sources of energy for years now, it's only a matter of time before Oil becomes useless anyway and we're all riding around in silly electric cars and waiting for a gust of wind or a sunny day to power up our heating systems and electricity supplies. Here a quick list of what were using now;
Solar energy Solar energy is generating of electricity from the sun. It is split up into two types, thermal and electric energy. These two subgroups mean that they heat up homes (and water) and generate electricity respectively.
Wind energy Wind energy is generating of electricity from the wind.
Geothermal energy Geothermal energy is using hot water or steam from the Earth’s interior for heating buildings or electricity generation.
Biofuel and ethanol Biofuel and ethanol are plant-derived substitutes of gasoline for powering vehicles.
Hydrogen Hydrogen is used as clean fuel for airplanes, spaceships, and some cars.
Algae fuel is a biofuel which is derived from algae. During photosynthesis, algae and other photosynthetic organisms capture carbon dioxide and sunlight and convert it into oxygen and biomass. The benefits of algal biofuel are that it can be produced industrially, thereby obviating the use of arable land and food crops (such as soy, palm, and canola), and that it has a very high oil yield as compared to all other sources of biofuel.
Biomass briquettes
Biomass briquettes are being developed in the developing world as an alternative to charcoal. The technique involves the conversion of almost any plant matter into compressed briquettes that typically have about 70% the calorific value of charcoal. There are relatively few examples of large scale briquette production. One exception is in North Kivu, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where forest clearance for charcoal production is considered to be the biggest threat to Mountain Gorilla habitat. The staff of Virunga National Park have successfully trained and equipped over 3500 people to produce biomass briquettes, thereby replacing charcoal produced illegally inside the national park, and creating significant employment for people living in extreme poverty in conflict affected areas.
Biogas digestion
Biogas digestion deals with harnessing the methane gas that is released when waste breaks down. This gas can be retrieved from garbage or sewage systems. Biogas digesters are used to process methane gas by having bacteria break down biomass in an anaerobic environment. The methane gas that is collected and refined can be used as an energy source for various products.
Biological Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen gas is a completely clean burning fuel; its only by-product is water.It also contains relatively high amount of energy compared with other fuels due to its chemical structure.
2H2 + O2 → 2H2O + High Energy
High Energy + 2H2O → 2H2 + O2
This requires a high-energy input, making commercial hydrogen very inefficient.Use of a biological vector as a means to split water, and therefore produce hydrogen gas, would allow for the only energy input to be solar radiation. Biological vectors can include bacteria or more commonly algae. This process is known as biological hydrogen production It requires the use of single celled organisms to create hydrogen gas through fermentation. Without the presence of oxygen, also known as an anaerobic environment, regular cellular respiration cannot take place and a process known as fermentation takes over. A major by-product of this process is hydrogen gas. If we could implement this on a large scale, then we could take sunlight, nutrients and water and create hydrogen gas to be used as a dense source of energy. Large-scale production has proven difficult. It was not until 1999 that we were able to even induce these anaerobic conditions by sulfur deprivation.Since the fermentation process is an evolutionary back up, turned on during stress, the cells would die after a few days. In 2000, a two-stage process was developed to take the cells in and out of anaerobic conditions and therefore keep them alive. For the last ten years, finding a way to do this on a large-scale has been the main goal of research. Careful work is being done to ensure an efficient process before large-scale production, however once a mechanism is developed, this type of production could solve our energy needs.
Floating wind farms
Floating wind farms are similar to a regular wind farm, but the difference is that they float in the middle of the ocean. Offshore wind farms can be placed in water up to 40 metres (130 ft) deep, whereas floating wind turbines can float in water up to 700 metres (2,300 ft) deep. The advantage of having a floating wind farm is to be able to harness the winds from the open ocean. Without any obstructions such as hills, trees and buildings, winds from the open ocean can reach up to speeds twice as fast as coastal areas.
Many new forms of energy listed in that, and thats just what we know there working on, i think the whole climate change fiasco is just getting out of hand really fast due to some weird strange weather, but people forget that records only began a 100 odd years ago and many scientists have predicted that it's due to the magnetosphere not man made gasses causing climate change. This quote, from a scientific discussion about a future ice age is the key to understanding what casues influxes in weather conditions;
Forget about global warming - man-made or natural - what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun's magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet's own magnetic field.
I suggest if you want to learn more about the Magnetic Polar Shifts, which are the cause of most of the sevre weather you are whitnessing that you read about it or watch documentarys on it, it's the only thing im worried about, as im pretty sure we would completely fail if we had an ice age >.<
Wow, thanks for the share. Interesting to think about global climate change this way and how slowing it down or preventing it is at odds with assets/economic ideas. I think it's hard to have a 100% qualified opinion from us because it's so hard to be able to understand it to a great degree from both an economic and environmental standpoint. However, I think we would have to undergo whatever contraction would be implied by this disregard of fossil fuels to be able to come out alive.
All civilisations believe themselves to be invincible and everlasting. All civilisations eventually fall for precisely this reason.
Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to ward off the coming collapse. One way or another, it's just over the horizon. Our industrial society has been building up a massive debt over the last few centuries. We think that our actions have no consequences. Even if we could stave off the impending climate change catastrophe through some sort of massive geo-engineering project: we'd still be acidifying our oceans and filling them with plastic and soil, chopping down the rainforests at an ever increasing rate, the species extinction rate would still be higher than ever before in the history of the earth, we'd still be pumping toxic materials into our rivers and the sky. It's all happening not because some secret cabal of evil men is conspiring behind the scenes, but because we want our pretty trinkets, because we want to fly and drive everywhere, because we value growth and not ecosystems. You're part of it. I'm part of it by sitting here at my computer, eating my food shipped in from overseas, taking the bus to university tomorrow to finish my Environmental Engineering thesis.
We can't eat money. It's a cliche, but it's the truth. We place no value on them at all, but we can't live without ecosystems. If the bees die (which theyare), we're fucked. How could we possibly feed 7 billion people without their help? One small species leaving us would have massive consequences, but it's happening virtually right across the board.
Our daily routines give us a sense of security and normality. Our institutions seem to have a certain solidity to them, reassuring us that everything is stable, everything will be fine. We know nothing else, which blinds us to the fragility of our society. How tenuous our supply chains are, how easily the house of cards will fall given the right set of circumstances.
It brings me no pleasure to say this, but collapse is inevitable. I don't know how it will happen. Perhaps this current economic crisis will bring down the world economy. Perhaps the consequences of peak oil will be felt as oil prices skyrocket, having flow on effects to virtually every aspect of our economy (food production, water purification, energy generation, plastics, transportation etc etc etc). Maybe a key ecosystem will collapse. Maybe the Ross Ice Shelf breaks off, flooding a significant portion of the world's arable land. Who knows? One thing is certain, it's happening in our lifetimes and probably a hell of lot sooner.
Here's an interview a few of you might find interesting. It's one of New Zealand's best interviewers Kim Hill talking Guy McPherson, Emeritus Professor at the University of Arizona, about the imminent collapse of the industrial economy and why it might be our only chance to stave off human extinction:
What you're talking about is impossible to predict. There is no way we know either the effects on the global economy, or the effects on the climate and world as a whole. Debating this from either standpoint is useless without a lot more reserch into nearly intangible areas of science and have a hard time defining what the weather.economy will be like tomorrow, let alone in 10-100 years.
It's a good question, and one we need to think about. But certainly not one with an easy answer. And certainly not one that the people in this thread will be able to answer unequivocally correct.
On July 26 2012 20:26 Alethios wrote: All civilisations believe themselves to be invincible and everlasting. All civilisations eventually fall for precisely this reason.
Ultimately, there is nothing we can do to ward off the coming collapse. One way or another, it's just over the horizon. Our industrial society has been building up a massive debt over the last few centuries. We think that our actions have no consequences. Even if we could stave off the impending climate change catastrophe through some sort of massive geo-engineering project: we'd still be acidifying our oceans and filling them with plastic and soil, chopping down the rainforests at an ever increasing rate, the species extinction rate would still be higher than ever before in the history of the earth, we'd still be pumping toxic materials into our rivers and the sky. It's all happening not because some secret cabal of evil men is conspiring behind the scenes, but because we want our pretty trinkets, because we want to fly and drive everywhere, because we value growth and not ecosystems. You're part of it. I'm part of it by sitting here at my computer, eating my food shipped in from overseas, taking the bus to university tomorrow to finish my Environmental Engineering thesis.
We can't eat money. It's a cliche, but it's the truth. We place no value on them at all, but we can't live without ecosystems. If the bees die (which theyare), we're fucked. How could we possibly feed 7 billion people without their help? One small species leaving us would have massive consequences, but it's happening virtually right across the board.
Our daily routines give us a sense of security and normality. Our institutions seem to have a certain solidity to them, reassuring us that everything is stable, everything will be fine. We know nothing else, which blinds us to the fragility of our society. How tenuous our supply chains are, how easily the house of cards will fall given the right set of circumstances.
It brings me no pleasure to say this, but collapse is inevitable. I don't know how it will happen. Perhaps this current economic crisis will bring down the world economy. Perhaps the consequences of peak oil will be felt as oil prices skyrocket, having flow on effects to virtually every aspect of our economy (food production, water purification, energy generation, plastics, transportation etc etc etc). Maybe a key ecosystem will collapse. Maybe the Ross Ice Shelf breaks off, flooding a significant portion of the world's arable land. Who knows? One thing is certain, it's happening in our lifetimes and probably a hell of lot sooner.
I don't buy the contention that collapse is inevitable as a result of ecological strain. I think there are two ways out:
1) Geo-engineering: already mentioned, but I was thinking along the lines of massive iron seeding in world oceans to encourage algal blooms that suck up CO2, or creating nanite-driven gas-traps that take hot, CO2-rich, waste gas and turn it into polysaccharides or something.
2) Space exploration. Encouraging mass emigration off Earth is the other solution to this problem, and I think a few trillion dollars of subsidized investment would go a long way towards making this technologically/economically feasible.
People forget that one of the main concerns of a scientist is to convince people they need funding, in order to do their research. This factors heavily into the global warming controversy, since the concerned public could very well provide this funding.
also the problem with modern democraty is that it is too slow. If they figure out some new law, they need like 2 years to pass it and after this period of time the world could have changed that they should configure the new law, adapting to the new circumstances, but this would take time and than the enviroment is changed again.
If one rules a larger portion of the world he could say: "Do this!", and we have to do as he says. (or she) But due to the fact that nearly every person in such a position is abusing thioer power, it dosn't work either.
So we are kinda f***ed.
Also in my opinion politicans are losing thier sight for reality and are just ignoring the bad things or the industrie is telling them what to do, but they don't recognize that this is wrong.
Maybe our "leaders" are willing to help us, what is the intention to do this job, but what they do hurts us in many cases, because their adivors are thelling them supid thing.
On July 26 2012 20:31 Alethios wrote: Here's an interview a few of you might find interesting. It's one of New Zealand's best interviewers Kim Hill talking Guy McPherson, Emeritus Professor at the University of Arizona, about the imminent collapse of the industrial economy and why it might be our only chance to stave off human extinction:
Wow. Thank you for this amazing talk between McPherson, and Kim Hill. I would never have come across this if it weren't for you. There are points to think over on both sides here.
Too many people have too much invested in denying Global Warming for any kind of global government-sanctioned policy to succeed, especially in the US.
What will probably happen: we'll go along as per usual, burn up some fuel, then the evidence about global warming will become concrete in terms of data analysis. Nothing will happen. Then, one day, a disaster caused by the climate change will hit an LEDC like 2004. No action will be taken in the US.
Then, a disaster will hit an affluent part of the States, a place where even scum-sucking selfish lobbyist billionaires might live or have emotional investment in. Suddenly, the race to become President will be based around who can convince people the best that they have been for preventing climate change all the time. They will attempt to cut down on energy useage in the US, with limited success. Instead, they will put political pressure on other countries, specifically those taking out hydrocarbons from the Earth. Eventually, the energy production will switch to less destructive sources, such as wind farms or (most likely) Nuclear fission or maybe fusion.
By then, climate change will be pretty bad. People will die. Rich businessmen and Republicans in America will convince themselves that the situation is fine, that they took the rational course of action, that there wasn't enough evidence at the time when they had the choice to minimise human energy consumption, that there were too many people alive anyway.
And people will look back and agree, just as most people on the internet do today: fuck everything about US politics.
On July 26 2012 20:31 Alethios wrote: Here's an interview a few of you might find interesting. It's one of New Zealand's best interviewers Kim Hill talking Guy McPherson, Emeritus Professor at the University of Arizona, about the imminent collapse of the industrial economy and why it might be our only chance to stave off human extinction:
Wow. Thank you for this amazing talk between McPherson, and Kim Hill. I would never have come across this if it weren't for you. There are points to think over on both sides here.
You're most welcome. I just happened to switch on the radio one day and this was playing. I only caught about half of it at the time, so I went and looked for the rest in the archive.
On July 26 2012 20:18 Pandemona wrote: Wait so your saying that climate change is caused by the carbon that is in the ground...and when it's all burnt we will have a fucked up climate?
There is 20trillion $s worth of Carbon in the ground waiting to be used and that would take a long time? I would not know how long it would take us to burn all that and let alone find it all. But we have been working on different sources of energy for years now, it's only a matter of time before Oil becomes useless anyway and we're all riding around in silly electric cars and waiting for a gust of wind or a sunny day to power up our heating systems and electricity supplies.
What I'm saying is that we have already spent and borrowed as if those $20 trillion worth of carbon fuels have already been burned.
The problem here is: None of us want to turn off our things. Because that's what it takes.
None of us want to give up our car. None of us want to get more efficient computers. None of us want to give up air conditioning.
These are the things that cause the problem; our use of energy. So, there's a lot of talk about "What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?" and watch, as it becomes more and more frantic. As the masses shout, louder and louder, to wonder what should "we" do to save the planet.
Well, the answer is, cut back your own consumption. You're part of the "we". If this is really something you believe in, it's time to man up and cut back. Buying a hybrid car doesn't mean anything. Buying an electric car means very little. Public transportation, people. Get used to it. Riding a bike and walking. These are what is required to hit that 2C target you want.
It's not just about a "hit to the economy". It's about devastation to the economy, and a complete reworking of the way you live your life. But the journey starts with a step, and instead of frantically wondering what we should do, why aren't YOU taking action?
Why do there have to be laws? Hmm? Why does everything have to be made into a law? You can act. I'm curious to hear the reasons people don't. Because everyone else is a bunch of earthfuckers that just want to destroy the planet, so what's the point? Meanwhile, you're being an earthfucker too while you blame the world for its problems.
The alternatives aren't there right now. Nuclear works, but the public doesn't want it. The rest are infantile and not practical. So? The only options are A. Sway opinion on nuclear. B. Cut consumption drastically.
But you won't do it. You'll stand around. Question why everyone else isn't doing anything. And fail to look at yourselves as the source of the problem.
On July 26 2012 21:40 SeaSwift wrote: Too many people have too much invested in denying Global Warming for any kind of global government-sanctioned policy to succeed, especially in the US.
What will probably happen: we'll go along as per usual, burn up some fuel, then the evidence about global warming will become concrete in terms of data analysis. Nothing will happen. Then, one day, a disaster caused by the climate change will hit an LEDC like 2004. No action will be taken in the US.
Then, a disaster will hit an affluent part of the States, a place where even scum-sucking selfish lobbyist billionaires might live or have emotional investment in. Suddenly, the race to become President will be based around who can convince people the best that they have been for preventing climate change all the time. They will attempt to cut down on energy useage in the US, with limited success. Instead, they will put political pressure on other countries, specifically those taking out hydrocarbons from the Earth. Eventually, the energy production will switch to less destructive sources, such as wind farms or (most likely) Nuclear fission or maybe fusion.
By then, climate change will be pretty bad. People will die. Rich businessmen and Republicans in America will convince themselves that the situation is fine, that they took the rational course of action, that there wasn't enough evidence at the time when they had the choice to minimise human energy consumption, that there were too many people alive anyway.
And people will look back and agree, just as most people on the internet do today: fuck everything about US politics.
I chuckled while reading this. The cynical style reminds me of catch 22.
Australia is pretty bad like this too (the US has it way worse it seems), the coal industry has a huge stranglehold over politics, and one of the main guys from the coal industry tried to buy out the last center-left newspaper that exists, but failed. Ironically it only helped people realise what was going on, when the conservative party didn't see a problem with it despite massive public opposition.
But its the reason we were the second last country to sign the kyoto agreement. The reason given was, "well China isn't doing shit, so negh" [regardless of what the rest of the world is doing]. Pretty childish. So we voted in a different guy who just fucking signed it and said "right glad we got that over with". Pity the agreement is pretty weak, but at least its something.
I think this article (and thread) is a bit too sensationalist.
You can't simply look at the levels of expected fuel usage and immediately equate that with today's pollution emission rates. Technology continues to find new and better ways of controlling pollution and emission -- whether by producing filters that work better, or refining fuel that burns cleaner. You just can't extrapolate pollution trends like that without taking into account technology improvements and other mitigating factors!
For example, people in the 70's thought that by the mid-90's or 2000 the ozone layer would be depleted enough to be a huge health hazard. What they didn't factor in is the discovery that CFC's were the major contributing cause of the depletion. With the ban of CFCs, the ozone layer is actually gradually healing (slowly, but it is healing).
If you couldn't be arsed to read all of that, here's your TL;DR
On July 26 2012 23:55 happyft wrote: I think this article (and thread) is a bit too sensationalist.
You can't simply look at the levels of expected fuel usage and immediately equate that with today's pollution emission rates. Technology continues to find new and better ways of controlling pollution and emission -- whether by producing filters that work better, or refining fuel that burns cleaner. You just can't extrapolate pollution trends like that without taking into account technology improvements and other mitigating factors!
For example, people in the 70's thought that by the mid-90's or 2000 the ozone layer would be depleted enough to be a huge health hazard. What they didn't factor in is the discovery that CFC's were the major contributing cause of the depletion. With the ban of CFCs, the ozone layer is actually gradually healing (slowly, but it is healing).
If you couldn't be arsed to read all of that, here's your TL;DR
I don't think you can compare that sketch to 30 years worth of data, recognized by the large majority of scientific academies and first world nations. You'd think that thousands of academics committing literally their entire life to this line of research would have taken all those factors you mentioned into account when producing their projections.
1 degree celcius rise may not seem like much for a hundred years, but then you venture into positive feedback mechnisms and solar fluctuations and you find that it's a very delicate tightrope of ecological balance. As a geologist I've studied examples where ash clouds from a volcano reflecting the sun's raise was enough to lower the temperature of the earth into a positive feedback loop causing an ice age.
A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can.
tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders.
I find it ridiculous how people trust the all mighty new god "science" to find another source of energy as potent as oil in the little time we have left if we continue consuming the way we do now...
On July 26 2012 23:55 happyft wrote: I think this article (and thread) is a bit too sensationalist.
You can't simply look at the levels of expected fuel usage and immediately equate that with today's pollution emission rates. Technology continues to find new and better ways of controlling pollution and emission -- whether by producing filters that work better, or refining fuel that burns cleaner. You just can't extrapolate pollution trends like that without taking into account technology improvements and other mitigating factors!
For example, people in the 70's thought that by the mid-90's or 2000 the ozone layer would be depleted enough to be a huge health hazard. What they didn't factor in is the discovery that CFC's were the major contributing cause of the depletion. With the ban of CFCs, the ozone layer is actually gradually healing (slowly, but it is healing).
If you couldn't be arsed to read all of that, here's your TL;DR
The reason the ozone wasn't completely depleted was precisely because people did something about it BECAUSE the trend was correct. We need to paint 'if-we-do-nothing' scenarios because that is what we face if we don't change what we're doing. They aren't sensationalist at all.
On July 26 2012 20:18 Pandemona wrote: Wait so your saying that climate change is caused by the carbon that is in the ground...and when it's all burnt we will have a fucked up climate?
There is 20trillion $s worth of Carbon in the ground waiting to be used and that would take a long time? I would not know how long it would take us to burn all that and let alone find it all. But we have been working on different sources of energy for years now, it's only a matter of time before Oil becomes useless anyway and we're all riding around in silly electric cars and waiting for a gust of wind or a sunny day to power up our heating systems and electricity supplies.
What I'm saying is that we have already spent and borrowed as if those $20 trillion worth of carbon fuels have already been burned.
But who cares? really. If shit gets bad, which it will if we do nothing, there will be global economic havoc much much worse than a few companies losing the ability to spend their reserves. You think the current droughts and Katrina was bad? These are baby kicks.
Interesting read. Kind of depressing really. I can't imagine what the world will look like in 50 years.
This passage struck me as particularly ridiculous:
In 2009, for the first time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce surpassed both the Republican and Democratic National Committees on political spending; the following year, more than 90 percent of the Chamber's cash went to GOP candidates, many of whom deny the existence of global warming. Not long ago, the Chamber even filed a brief with the EPA urging the agency not to regulate carbon – should the world's scientists turn out to be right and the planet heats up, the Chamber advised, "populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological and technological adaptations."
So apparently we will be able to adapt our physiology to climate change. Superfast evolution ftw!
I'm the opposite of a climate defeatist: I'm an economic defeatist. I feel as though the collapse of the global economy is inevitable anyway. If we cut ourselves off from the trillions we've invested in carbon futures, we lose a chunk of cash larger than the entire US economy. If we don't, global warming continues, food and water supplies shrink and prices skyrocket, and we lose large sections of landmass to the rising oceans, and the US's major financial/commercial centers (New York and California) go in the drink.
The only difference between the two scenarios is that the first one gives us a chance to come back by introducing chaos: We lose $20 trillion and then gamble on hyperinflation by reintroducing a big portion of that via government investment (printed money) in green energy. If we're really, really lucky, and a lot smarter than we've been thus far, maybe we can lose the money slowly enough to not cause a global economic shock.
But the first step in fixing any problem is admitting we have one, and we haven't had a great track record in the US on admitting that maybe we need to change ourselves to adapt to the royal mess we've introduced.
So apparently we will be able to adapt our physiology to climate change. Superfast evolution ftw!
it's not that we need to actively engage in evolving... when things get fucked up, the people people that survive are the ones who do things differently than those who dont. then in retrospect we can call that evolution
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
The science is settled in the same sense that anthropogenic CO2 emissions cause climate change is as settled as genetic variation/mutation and selective pressures cause evolution. It's not settled in that all of the specifics and intricacies as to how this happens in every situation, still has unexplored regions. That's just how science works.
If you mean the 'science' of economics, then yeah, it's a pretty ridiculous perspective that collapse is inevitable if we leave the oil in the ground. It isn't inevitable at all, it's a PR job.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
What a useful contribution. Please, do elaborate.
best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
sorry op but basing your entire article off something rolling stone magazine tells you something about the earth seems a bit retarded, you know, maybe because its a music magazine?
look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
This entire article made me want to puke with it's stupidness and saying "NOT EXACT NUMBERS, BUT YOU GET THE POINT" is a little like saying, i can't use the calculator on my computer longer than 5 seconds without hurting my brain, so here's just a random #.
On July 27 2012 01:07 eits wrote: sorry op but basing your entire article off something rolling stone magazine tells you something about the earth seems a bit retarded, you know, maybe because its a music magazine?
look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
This entire article made me want to puke with it's stupidness and saying "NOT EXACT NUMBERS, BUT YOU GET THE POINT" is a little like saying, i can't use the calculator on my computer longer than 5 seconds without hurting my brain, so here's just a random #.
I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
read this, this is basic geology/geography. If you don't think the "average" temperatures of the entire earth climate is going to change after an ice age, and then a little ice age no more than 400 years ago, then you're sadly mistaking.
Heres the thing about climatology:
To "accurately" study a climate, they need weather data from 30 years in time, this could be 1920-1950, 1950-1980 and so forth.
Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
That's assuming we have to deal with the problems of tomorow with today's technology which is most definately silly.
There are already some decent alternatives to the traditional energy sources and a few that might blow up in the next 5-10 years and make oil/natural gas pretty much obsolete.
People seem to forget how high the standard of living is compared to 50 years ago even going through the current economic crisis and that the technological rate of progress is constantly accelerating thus making the future very very bright regardless of the perceived serious problems that we're facing today.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
What a useful contribution. Please, do elaborate.
best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
What a useful contribution. Please, do elaborate.
best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
On July 26 2012 14:26 Shady Sands wrote: By now, some of you may have already read the Rolling Stones' excellent article
I'm amazed to learn we really have the point where many are increasingly of the opinion that we all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place and some say that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
While that's a great book, what does that quote have to do with global warming?
I wonder if this guy is still around and if he now has his answer.
All you people saying the science is settled and anticipating economic collapse are, in the politest of terms, fucking idiots.
What a useful contribution. Please, do elaborate.
best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
just saying what he said to me? good story katie holmes
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
I don't think that 20 trillion "just evaporates." That 20 trillion (or w/e it actually is, keep in mind we're talking about a rolling stone article) is based on the idea that our energy consumption and methods will proceed in a projected fashion that is somewhat consistent with what we are doing now. It is based on the current value of those raw materials in an energy market that is similar to our current one.
If we quickly shift to alternatives, money will be generated from those alternatives that wasn't anticipated beforehand. Alternatives (nuclear, solar, etc.) require raw materials of their own, and those projections would have to change in order to meet the increased demand of those alternatives. Would it cover the entire 20 trillion? I would guess no, but it wouldn't be a complete 20 trillion deficit.
On July 27 2012 00:38 WhiteDog wrote: I find it ridiculous how people trust the all mighty new god "science" to find another source of energy as potent as oil in the little time we have left if we continue consuming the way we do now...
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please. The EPA and NASA are organizations of scientists. Facts have no political bias, and you don't get to choose your facts because of who you voted for in the last election. + Show Spoiler +
To quote Aaron Sorkin: I'm a registered republican; people just think I'm a liberal because I believe hurricanes are caused by barometric shifts and not gay marriage.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
And with that argument, i would say at least 75% of my student body in geography department thought it was bullshit, so i guess we are all just denialist who are bad evil villains for actually learning some truth behind it.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
basing the entire earths climate on a 30 year study seems pretty tinfoil to me, so it's in the eye of the beholder
On July 27 2012 00:38 WhiteDog wrote: I find it ridiculous how people trust the all mighty new god "science" to find another source of energy as potent as oil in the little time we have left if we continue consuming the way we do now...
the slight difference is that science is not based on faith but on facts
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
I don't think that 20 trillion "just evaporates." That 20 trillion (or w/e it actually is, keep in mind we're talking about a rolling stone article) is based on the idea that our energy consumption and methods will proceed in a projected fashion that is somewhat consistent with what we are doing now. It is based on the current value of those raw materials in an energy market that is similar to our current one.
If we quickly shift to alternatives, money will be generated from those alternatives that wasn't anticipated beforehand. Alternatives (nuclear, solar, etc.) require raw materials of their own, and those projections would have to change in order to meet the increased demand of those alternatives. Would it cover the entire 20 trillion? I would guess no, but it wouldn't be a complete 20 trillion deficit.
You're right, and in fact the 20 trillion doesn't actually just evaporate if we decide to leave it in the ground either (since leaving it isn't a single decision, it is many decisions made at different times, and with different levels of certainty), so it's an absolutely failed premise to assume it does. Not only that, but the 20 trillion doesn't necessarily make its way into the general economy either, and if it does, it doesn't necessarily have the same multiplier effect as investments in sustainable energy infrastructure, which has shown in a lot of different areas to have huge positive effects on local economies many times greater than the actual gov't expenditure.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, give no sources of your own, and say you took some class at Texas State that proves it all wrong. Then you were reduced to baseless and vulgar polemic name-calling.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, give no sources of your own, and say you took some class at Texas State that proves it all wrong.
Good job.
Graduating from the best Geography department in the nation makes me a little more accredited to call bullshit on this than internet links, sorry if theres no link you don't have "proof" but linking me to fucking gov't agencies really doesn't make you an amazing "Researcher" rather than just typing nasa and epa in google and calling that facts, so your argument there is pretty dumb.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Graduating from the best Geography department in the nation makes me a little more accredited to call bullshit on this than internet links, sorry if theres no link you don't have "proof" but linking me to fucking gov't agencies really doesn't make you an amazing "Researcher" rather than just typing nasa and epa in google and calling that facts, so your argument there is pretty dumb.
It would help if the content of your links actually had something to do with the climate change discussion. By contrast, my links actualy DID have content on climate change, including a whole tab entitled "evidence." Protip: These agencies employ some of the best climate scientists in the country.
And actually, while we're at it, how does a geography degree give you any sort of sway in a climate debate?
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, give no sources of your own, and say you took some class at Texas State that proves it all wrong.
Good job.
Yup, there are some pretty angry / odd / hypocritical people that sometimes post in these threads, but we don't have to pay attention to them right?
I like the EPA site in that it's a more or less credible source (though I sometimes grit my teeth at the stances it takes on some agricultural matters), and it does a nice job of presenting information. Hopefully it doesn't get defunded like a lot of similar Canadian organizations under the current gov't.
On July 27 2012 01:01 thrawn2112 wrote: best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
just saying what he said to me? good story katie holmes
On July 27 2012 01:10 thrawn2112 wrote:
you're a retro wannabe hipster faggot
in response to
On July 27 2012 01:07 eits wrote: look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
read this, this is basic geology/geography. If you don't think the "average" temperatures of the entire earth climate is going to change after an ice age, and then a little ice age no more than 400 years ago, then you're sadly mistaking.
Heres the thing about climatology:
To "accurately" study a climate, they need weather data from 30 years in time, this could be 1920-1950, 1950-1980 and so forth.
Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
The mods are going to get rid of you in about 5 minutes but I'll bite. Why are you so concerned with what geologists think of a complex issue of climatological nature? There isn't really any controversy among the people that actually study these things. But yeah, fuck them let's all listen to the geologists many of whom are employed by the petroleum industry.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, give no sources of your own, and say you took some class at Texas State that proves it all wrong.
Good job.
Graduating from the best Geography department in the nation makes me a little more accredited to call bullshit on this than internet links, sorry if theres no link you don't have "proof" but linking me to fucking gov't agencies really doesn't make you an amazing "Researcher" rather than just typing nasa and epa in google and calling that facts, so your argument there is pretty dumb.
you: just stick up for others, cause you don't have your own opinion? show me your badass internet links bro!
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, then give totally irrelevant sources and say you graduated from the "best" Geography department without any proof. Hey, didn't you know that I'm the king of the world?
On July 27 2012 01:01 thrawn2112 wrote: best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
just saying what he said to me? good story katie holmes
On July 27 2012 01:07 eits wrote: look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
what was the whole point of your detective work? I called the writer of an article some name and he got butt hurt like it's his boyfran, so good work carmen san diego
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
You forgot /tinfoilhat.
the tinfoil hat comes from people like you who are uneducated in the field and your only argument boils down to you just saying /tinifoil?
typical shithead liberal
They: Gave you reliable sources and evidence that support a certain claim.
You: Say those sources are wrong, give no sources of your own, and say you took some class at Texas State that proves it all wrong.
Good job.
Graduating from the best Geography department in the nation makes me a little more accredited to call bullshit on this than internet links, sorry if theres no link you don't have "proof" but linking me to fucking gov't agencies really doesn't make you an amazing "Researcher" rather than just typing nasa and epa in google and calling that facts, so your argument there is pretty dumb.
you: just stick up for others, cause you don't have your own opinion? show me your badass internet links bro!
I just had to quote this bit of e-peen gold. The best Geography department in the nation, ehh? The system is corrupt, all government agencies are liars, but trust in my highly rated and systemically accredited education in Geography which privies me to a world of hidden information on climate change. Oh wait, I'm insane and a pathological liar.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
You didn't read its Resources section, though, because the first one listed, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q1 does not make a claim that humans are causing the warming of the climate, but also makes the claim that the planet is warming not due to a natural shift but due to greenhouse gasses.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
On July 27 2012 01:01 thrawn2112 wrote: best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
just saying what he said to me? good story katie holmes
On July 27 2012 01:10 thrawn2112 wrote:
you're a retro wannabe hipster faggot
in response to
On July 27 2012 01:07 eits wrote: look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
what was the whole point of your detective work? I called the writer of an article some name and he got butt hurt like it's his boyfran, so good work carmen san diego
what are you even saying
i think i'm done posting in tl general forums, i cant distinguish the trolls from the angry or stupid
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
You people don't believe anything anybody tells you unless it's in line with your beliefs. NASA is not "the internet." It's NASA. The EPA is not "the internet." It's the EPA.
You live somewhere that only vaguely resembles reality. Done here.
On July 27 2012 01:01 thrawn2112 wrote: best just to ignore his posts at this point. in both this thread and the greenland one all he does is throw around insults without making any point whatsoever. the closest he came to contributing to the debate was posting a graph unrelated to the current discussion and then not make any claims based on said graph
rofl and you weren't just doing the same?
hipster hypocritical retard
Lol. The pot calling the kettle black. Quoted so you can't edit it out.
just saying what he said to me? good story katie holmes
On July 27 2012 01:10 thrawn2112 wrote:
you're a retro wannabe hipster faggot
in response to
On July 27 2012 01:07 eits wrote: look at a fucking scientific paper that tells me this please and not some retro wannabe hipster faggot writing on shit he has no clue about
what was the whole point of your detective work? I called the writer of an article some name and he got butt hurt like it's his boyfran, so good work carmen san diego
what are you even saying
i think i'm done posting in tl general forums, i cant distinguish the trolls from the angry or stupid
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
No one has believed a word you've said, and to us you are nothing more than a faceless bit of the internet. Therefore I deem your claim false.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
You people don't believe anything anybody tells you unless it's in line with your beliefs. NASA is not "the internet." It's NASA. The EPA is not "the internet." It's the EPA.
You live somewhere that only vaguely resembles reality. Done here.
and you vaguely resemble someone who is really upset that they have to get all their facts off gov't websites, when the gov't has never lied before.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
No one has believed a word you've said, and to us you are nothing more than a faceless bit of the internet. Therefore I deem your claim false.
but you sure believe those nasa and epa scientist you hang out with everday!
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
There are other uses for oil and probably coal too that don't depend on them being burned for energy. In fact, oil/coal are quite cheap right now. As they become more scarce, shouldn't their value increase, regardless of the application?
I think my point is similar to someone elses that followed up - that money won't evaporate. Some of it will be lost surely, but if we were actually trying to fix that problem, I'm sure there is a workaround.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
You people don't believe anything anybody tells you unless it's in line with your beliefs. NASA is not "the internet." It's NASA. The EPA is not "the internet." It's the EPA.
You live somewhere that only vaguely resembles reality. Done here.
and you vaguely resemble someone who is really upset that they have to get all their facts off gov't websites, when the gov't has never lied before.
reality sucks, get used to it
Sounds good. NASA's a bunch of liars. The whole "mecca for engineers" thing is a total sham. It's actually just a bunch of lying bureaucrats who occasionally rocket technology forward in the process of attempting a previously unthinkable feat. Glad we've cleared that up.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
No one has believed a word you've said, and to us you are nothing more than a faceless bit of the internet. Therefore I deem your claim false.
but you sure believe those nasa and epa scientist you hang out with everday!
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
There are other uses for oil and probably coal too that don't depend on them being burned for energy. In fact, oil/coal are quite cheap right now. As they become more scarce, shouldn't their value increase, regardless of the application?
you're right, oil and coal prices are just going to fluctuate for years like they have been, but when it gets bad in about 30-40 years when people think oil prices and coal prices will be through the roof if we still consume these fuels at the same rate then we could possibly see oil easily going for $1000 a barrel. If we don't come up with alternative energy resources OTHER than oil/coal being 2 huge ones, then we might be screwed in the long run for our cars.
here's hoping electric cars or magnetic cars are in our future, cause i do not argue that oil rigs can cause environmental damage, but to say we are warming up the entire earth due solely to human fossil fuel consumption after the last little ice age is silly in my book.
On July 27 2012 01:14 eits wrote: Earth has been here 4.6 BILLION YEARS, what the fuck are you trusting Al Gore and Rolling Stone for? None of my teachers at TXST geography department ever cared about global warming cause they all thought it was fucking bullshit. Hell, one of my classes was completely over debunking "An Inconvenient truth", which is a perfect example of someone just using this shit for their personal agenda (see running for president, and making fucking millions"). He would go to specific places during summer time, take pictures, then go back in winter time, and compare the 2 and be like HERP DERP THEY ARE DIFFERENT DO YOU SEE? that's what you get for letting a POLITICIAN do you research, and you not do it for yourself.
This is the straw man that people like to present - that people who aren't climate change denialists are just getting all their research from Al Gore.
Show me how these were written by Al Gore, please.
lol, you believe what EPA tells you? Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
I love how people say "im a denialists", what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
This is all due to coming out of the last little ice age 400 years ago, of course our "Average" temperatures are going to go up if we just came out of an age that is cold as shit.
If you think 30 years of research is worth basing 4.6 billion years of earth time for a scientific experiment and call it "Truth" is just bullshit
Do you read what you're saying? And you didn't address the fact that NASA had an identical set of facts. Is NASA also trying to choke the oil companies dry with their regulations?
For that matter, why on earth would the EPA care about oil profits? The EPA was founded by the executive order of Richard Nixon to regulate pollutants at a time when you couldn't actually drink the water in some of the worse US cities. If oil companies make a profit, good on them, the EPA doesn't care. Their only concern is the level of pollution and its impact on the environment and the well-being of US citizens.
I don't think you realize how absurd you sound. But maybe I can quote your two paragraphs in reverse order with some bolding and you'll get an idea:
what is it with people having to belong on one side and the other side is always "the bad guy", cause you always have to categorize others to make yourself feel more important by being on the "good side"
Those people are just trying to completely choke oil companies dry with their retarded ass regulations they add every year that effectively just cost companies (big and small) millions of dollars in fees that wouldn't have been here 10 years ago?
Hmmm....
Oh, so never in the history of gov't agencies did they get set up for an original goal and then completely turn fucked up ? TSA, is the first that comes to mind.
give me one city that was in the american top 10 in population that couldn't drink their cities water, cause according to you guys the almighty google was unable to find any. If the population of NYC was unable to drink water it might be a big story, that shit happens in many areas today, so great job EPA is doing!
Please address the fact that NASA has identical claims listed on its website.
you people believe everything the internet tells you. done here
No one has believed a word you've said, and to us you are nothing more than a faceless bit of the internet. Therefore I deem your claim false.
but you sure believe those nasa and epa scientist you hang out with everday!
The problem here is: None of us want to turn off our things. Because that's what it takes.
None of us want to give up our car. None of us want to get more efficient computers. None of us want to give up air conditioning.
These are the things that cause the problem; our use of energy. So, there's a lot of talk about "What do we do? WHAT DO WE DO?" and watch, as it becomes more and more frantic. As the masses shout, louder and louder, to wonder what should "we" do to save the planet.
Well, the answer is, cut back your own consumption. You're part of the "we". If this is really something you believe in, it's time to man up and cut back. Buying a hybrid car doesn't mean anything. Buying an electric car means very little. Public transportation, people. Get used to it. Riding a bike and walking. These are what is required to hit that 2C target you want.
Cutting down on energy consumption is one way of going about it, but definately not the only way or even the best way to do it. Energy comes from different sources in different countries. If your energy is coming from burning of coal or oil and to a lesser degree natural gas, yes, cutting down on consumption will help. If your energy comes from wind-energy, solar energy and biogas, hell, go nuts in energy consumption. Surplus of power is a thing of the devil (it is a complete waste)! To some degree aquatic technologies are also good energy where consumption is less problematic. The problems arise as soon as you start using the carbon sinners in combination with the others. Then you more or less have to assume that the consumption is problematic. That theory is even further supported by burnings having the best stability of production, compared to solar energy, windpower and to some degree the aquatic.technologies.
The real solutions are pretty simple: You can make gasoline from plant material for about 3 $/liter, coal from trees is not a problem in energy production, algae might be possible to produce in amounts and qualities, where you can burn the drywieght for energy, a lot of crop-leftovers can be used for biogas/burning and so on. There are plenty of reliable ways to produce this energy without turning down consumption. It might hurt the meat-prices and the price of furnitures and it definately would make electricity/heat a lot more expensive, but it is completely possible and even plausible without making legislative tricks to turn down the use of energy. Make it illegal to use coal and oil in production of heat/electricity and we are getting somewhere fast. Make it illegal to collect oil from the underground and the whole problem is solved. Reducing energy consumption in itself is not a good long-term solution. Give people the incentive through a ban on carbon-emitting energy production and the reduced energy consumption will come automatically for economic reasons!
On July 27 2012 01:10 HardlyNever wrote: I think the "obvious" answer is that we dump the carbon fuels, and part of that 20 trillion dollars comes from investment in alternatives. How much of that could come from alternatives? I have no clue.
The problem is, no one will care, or even worse, have the real authority to do anything about this on the scale that needs to be done. This is one of the first truly global problems humanity is facing, and we are ill organized and equipped to deal with it right now. Does that mean we shouldn't try at all? No, I don't think so.
I don't think this is something that most of us that are alive now will really suffer for, or not in a major ways. However, 4 or 5 generations after us very well might be at that "well, we might be fucked" point, and they won't have a way out.
On July 27 2012 01:07 Bigtony wrote: I think climate change is real and the solutions are already present. Nuclear power is the biggest avenue for drastically reducing carbon fuel consumption. To reduce CO2 that's already in the air, I'm positive there's a way for us to do it, people just don't do it.
The issue that this ignores is that we've got a lot of money (20 trillion) invested in carbon futures. Which is to say - a lot of our nation's wealth is based on the fact that people believe we're going to dig up and burn that carbon in the future. If the winds shift away from that, that 20 trillion basically just evaporates. And to put that in perspective, the current size of the US economy is around 15 trillion. So basically envision a world where the US's wealth evaporates.
I'm in agreement with you, just want to make sure you understand the implications to what you're saying.
There are other uses for oil and probably coal too that don't depend on them being burned for energy. In fact, oil/coal are quite cheap right now. As they become more scarce, shouldn't their value increase, regardless of the application?
Well, this is kinda true in some situations.
But the issue is that there is so much coal/oil that we will have basically screwed over the globe long before they become scarce-- this is much much more the case for coal.
Sadly, coal production has starting to increase again in the past few years after a long period of stagnation-- partly due to demand and production from China, and partly due to increases in the cost to extract oil reserves.
It's really important to discourage this-- we don't want ANY investment into more infrastructure for coal burning, because that makes is much more difficult to transition away from it. If a politician just voted on approving a coal plant, it's going to be very difficult to convince him to decommission it.
We need to encourage investment in renewables infrastructure--- better power grids to accomodate microgeneration, and programs that encourage individual investment in things like wind/solar.
Regarding Pandemona's and caradoc's posts, yes there are a lot of alternative energy sources, and the amount of energy that we can draw from these alternative sources are increasing at a substantial rate as we develop and implement the technology. However, the amount of energy our cities and nations are using are also increasing as well.
Specifically at Pandemona's post, the energy sources you listed have some pretty significant drawbacks. I do agree that with enough funding, these drawbacks could essentially be eliminated via technological advancement... but that's with enough funding, which I doubt will exist for a long time.
Solar energy: highly depending on sunlight exposure and intensity. Disadvantageous for countries where the sun is not as intense (nearer the poles), where there is frequent cloud cover (much of Europe, especially UK), and is currently not very cost effective. + Show Spoiler +
They also require vast amounts of land in order to be output the amount of voltage that would be required to travel over high voltage power lines. Vast amounts of land means you can't build them in or near cities, where land is expensive. You lose a LOT of electricity sending power over vast distances, and the only way to reduce these inefficiencies is by increasing the voltage. Or use better but more expensive conductors. When most people think of solar energy, they think of solar panels, or panels of Photovoltaic Cells. PV technology is (in my opinion) the best solar energy technology, but it is also the most difficult to develop. R&D companies are throwing all they have at it, but we've only managed to increase our efficiencies from around <8% to around 18-20% at the same price point (correct me if I'm wrong, this is off the top of my head). Sure you could get an awesome solar panel with an excellent energy conversion ratio, but its price tag would go from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
We've developed a bunch of different methods to get around efficiencies. We're using fields of mirrors to melt a huge ass block of salt, where the hot liquid would be used to boil water, steam turbine, etc. We've thought about collecting solar energy in space (where atmosphere wouldn't obstruct) and beam it down to earth in microwaves. And more practically, many new homes are being built with solar water heaters and solar convection heaters, where water and air are passed through black tubes in your roof, get warmed by the sun, before going into the water boiler or air heater. It saves energy as you're heating water from 35 degrees celsius to 100 rather than from 10 degrees to 100.
Wind energy: highly dependent on... you guessed it, wind. Wind turbines have the potential to produce a LOT of energy at their peak, but they're usually capped to prevent the motors from running too hot and burning out. Increasing the cap would only create extreme highs and lows of electricity surging onto the grid. The alternative to this is battery technology, where your peak electricity isn't wasted but instead put into batteries (or into a water tower), and when there are times of low wind, the grid can grab from the battery instead of the turbine (or release water to run a hydro dam). And while we're doing this, batteries still aren't as efficient as we'd like to think, and usually hydro dams are along rivers, which are in valleys, which don't have as much wind as hills.
Geothermal energy: The best thing about geothermal is that it's consistent and reliable. The bad thing is that it requires you to drill a deep hole in the ground. Many places in the world have frequent earthquakes, and geothermal wells can be easily damaged by a higher magnitude earthquake. In Canada, we have a thing called the Canadian Shield, which is a huge ass chunk of central and eastern Canada that is solid rock. Other countries have similar areas where surface soil only goes down 100m or so, and after that it's solid. Geothermal wells go down by the kilometers. The main issue, in my opinion, is freelance contractors going around and drilling everywhere. There have been cases of large sinkholes created because contractors didn't do their geography/geology homework. There are even rumours of earthquakes being caused by drilling, but I haven't paid much attention to this so somebody else can say something about it.
Biofuel and ethanol: Fantastic if you're using bio waste, such as from organic landfills or liquified waste from the food industry. Not as good if you're planting fields of biofuel crops and using the harvest to make gasoline instead of food. Even worse if you're planting only fields of biofuel crops and nothing else because you want to make fuel, cue skyrocketing food prices. Also needs a lot of arable land (as you said in your post).
Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait.
Algae fuel: I think this has potential, there are some downsides I can think of but none are really that significant.
Biomass briquettes: Being used in developing countries, I think it has good potential. Biogas digestion: Also being used in developing countries, especially in South Asia, really good for helping poor farming communities get on their feet. Floating wind farms: A more feasible version of the space solar energy concept, main difficulty is getting the electricity from its source to the cities, where deep sea cables can be difficult and energy loss over long distances is also an issue.
The thing that irks me is that all of the above technologies are very similar in development to what we've seen in microcomputing over the last half century. In my opinion the only thing that is holding us back is technological development, which requires funding and public focus.
Regarding happyft's post about the Ozone Layer. The Montreal Protocol that got the ball rolling for CFC bans was the first successful win for climate environmentalists, and probably will be the only one for a long time. A lot of us really can't appreciate how important stopping the depletion of the Ozone Layer was. There would be a lot of weird shit happening if we allowed that to keep going. And you thought that sunburn was bad.
We dump so much shit into our environment and we actually start worrying on airborn particles that can be easily digested by plants and algea, hell, a simple volcano has so much more influence on it then we do, and even that the earth can take without much issue, climate has always gone in cycles due to the sun, we survived far hotter periods here in europe in the medieval era, and we're still a long way to go before we're there (based on the current rate of warming).
What causes much more problems to us is the massive pollution in the seas, the place where 80% of our oxygen get's produced and with less available land for grazing and farming due to the increased warmth it will become more and more relevant as our main source of food.
And sadly enough, both with general pollution or even the CO2 craze, most of the damage is done by third world countries that would most likely collapse if they did not have access to oil, coal and gas, often times the same can be said for dumping waste into the ocean, be it third world countries with irresponsible governments that use parts of their coast as a garbage dump, badly regulated companies or the poor quality of a transportation vehicles.
No idea why that fucktard Gore did this on CO2 when this is still just a hypothesis, and with the amount of research they've done into it that says a lot, if global warming was real, how can it be harder to detect then the Higgs boson? Guess he couldn't have tried to attention whore with the oceans that actually do need help, if there's a lot of available data he can't claim whatever bullshit he want's anymore.
Last ive check the couple past winters were the coolest in the last 50 years need i go on?
Back in 2000s and al ghore's presidential run we got bombardise with bs like the eastern islands gonna be under water in the next 10 years and desperate residents on tv crying pls help us survive and other bs
Been there done that same ol bs with the solely reason to avoid the real problems aka polution poverty etc etc.
Btw do you really forget that easy twice the climategate ? Last ive check the consiuder that a crime cause the emails were stolen from officials and such thus emails were true
Lastly Nasa fired their lead climatologist some years ago , a hugarian one , name i dont remeber , when in his equation ( who predicts 100% the co2 behavior of mars and earth ) said it doesnt matter how much co2 is in atmosphere terms of rising temperature
Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait.
this is the one that is the most interesting to me, if only they could figure out how to break down H2O in an extremely efficient way, then we would be able to have TONS of energy for a long time, but like you said its so damn inefficient right now it's not even close to worth our troubles.
People at Chevron and Exxon have been trying to figure that out for years, if a company with that much money can't do it then it's pretty damn crazy hard to do, which stinks for us.
They are testing areas of CA that have magnetic highways, and the cars will be 6 inches apart going 80 mph, in their theory, if they could have the entire US highway magnetized then this would work great with our GPS abilities, but once again, at what cost?
It doesn't matter if global warming is real or not at this point, as he stated there is TONS of different ways to get fuel or energy, but if they can't make a buck off it, they won't do it. If it was so important for our government to save the world from climate change you'd think they'd force them to go to those resources.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
On July 27 2012 02:04 topoulo wrote: THE REAL question should be like ...
IS THERE A LINK between co2 and temperature
The answer is its not
all other are simply bs
Last ive check the couple past winters were the coolest in the last 50 years need i go on?
Back in 2000s and al ghore's presidential run we got bombardise with bs like the eastern islands gonna be under water in the next 10 years and desperate residents on tv crying pls help us survive and other bs
Been there done that same ol bs with the solely reason to avoid the real problems aka polution poverty etc etc.
Btw do you really forget that easy twice the climategate ? Last ive check the consiuder that a crime cause the emails were stolen from officials and such thus emails were true
Lastly Nasa fired their lead climatologist some years ago , a hugarian one , name i dont remeber , when in his equation ( who predicts 100% the co2 behavior of mars and earth ) said it doesnt matter how much co2 is in atmosphere terms of rising temperature
dude, i agree 100% , but everyone on here apparently is in love with their tree out front making themselves too blind to actually read a post successfully on these forums
On July 26 2012 20:46 Shady Sands wrote: 1) Geo-engineering: already mentioned, but I was thinking along the lines of massive iron seeding in world oceans to encourage algal blooms that suck up CO2.
Researched this as a project, iron seeding has potential where iron is the limiting nutrient. There are also a dozen other notable limiting nutrients that we could throw into the oceans and hope CO2 consuming stuff will grow. The cost effectiveness is debatable, in my opinion I don't think it's very worthwhile right now, but has potential.
The only issue with algal blooms is that they create a layer on the surface that completely blocks out sunlight and prevents oxygen from penetrating into the water. Thus you create deadzones where there's nothing alive there except algae thanks to plentiful plant nutrients. Also known as eutrophication.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state.
well one of the biggest issues in the US is that the grid is meant for distribution from central generating stations to small consumers. It is not designed for generation all over the place, and the grid infrastructure in many areas can't handle installed wind/solar generation. There would be a TON more renewable installations if the grid allowed more kind of many-to-many connections rather than being based around one-to-many. (if that makes sense)
But upgrading the grid is just good policy--- the spending on it will create work, and have a much better multiplier effect on the general economy than say military spending etc, and it paves the way for further economic development around renewables.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
that's finally good to hear, but does this mean once we don't subsidize the wind farmers we should be expecting to see these across the US? I think we need to be getting this shit out asap but some people are hellbent on keeping us back, that'd be a huge step in right direction for us to have these at the very least in every state.
well one of the biggest issues in the US is that the grid is meant for distribution from central generating stations to small consumers. It is not meant for generation all over the place, and the grid infrastructure in many areas can't handle installed wind/solar generation.
But upgrading the grid is just good policy--- it's got much better effects on the general economy than military spending, and it paves the way for further economic development around renewables.
To make this work it sounds like we should do it in reverse. Make small consumer areas big energy resource areas with wind farms, and have some more farms that are closer to the city to ensure that the major ones also get energy, instead of just having all of our eggs in one basket (all energy from central locale)
On July 27 2012 02:00 Not_Computer wrote: Regarding Pandemona's and caradoc's posts, yes there are a lot of alternative energy sources, and the amount of energy that we can draw from these alternative sources are increasing at a substantial rate as we develop and implement the technology. However, the amount of energy our cities and nations are using are also increasing as well.
Specifically at Pandemona's post, the energy sources you listed have some pretty significant drawbacks. I do agree that with enough funding, these drawbacks could essentially be eliminated via technological advancement... but that's with enough funding, which I doubt will exist for a long time.
Solar energy: highly depending on sunlight exposure and intensity. Disadvantageous for countries where the sun is not as intense (nearer the poles), where there is frequent cloud cover (much of Europe, especially UK), and is currently not very cost effective. + Show Spoiler +
They also require vast amounts of land in order to be output the amount of voltage that would be required to travel over high voltage power lines. Vast amounts of land means you can't build them in or near cities, where land is expensive. You lose a LOT of electricity sending power over vast distances, and the only way to reduce these inefficiencies is by increasing the voltage. Or use better but more expensive conductors. When most people think of solar energy, they think of solar panels, or panels of Photovoltaic Cells. PV technology is (in my opinion) the best solar energy technology, but it is also the most difficult to develop. R&D companies are throwing all they have at it, but we've only managed to increase our efficiencies from around <8% to around 18-20% at the same price point (correct me if I'm wrong, this is off the top of my head). Sure you could get an awesome solar panel with an excellent energy conversion ratio, but its price tag would go from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands.
We've developed a bunch of different methods to get around efficiencies. We're using fields of mirrors to melt a huge ass block of salt, where the hot liquid would be used to boil water, steam turbine, etc. We've thought about collecting solar energy in space (where atmosphere wouldn't obstruct) and beam it down to earth in microwaves. And more practically, many new homes are being built with solar water heaters and solar convection heaters, where water and air are passed through black tubes in your roof, get warmed by the sun, before going into the water boiler or air heater. It saves energy as you're heating water from 35 degrees celsius to 100 rather than from 10 degrees to 100.
Wind energy: highly dependent on... you guessed it, wind. Wind turbines have the potential to produce a LOT of energy at their peak, but they're usually capped to prevent the motors from running too hot and burning out. Increasing the cap would only create extreme highs and lows of electricity surging onto the grid. The alternative to this is battery technology, where your peak electricity isn't wasted but instead put into batteries (or into a water tower), and when there are times of low wind, the grid can grab from the battery instead of the turbine (or release water to run a hydro dam). And while we're doing this, batteries still aren't as efficient as we'd like to think, and usually hydro dams are along rivers, which are in valleys, which don't have as much wind as hills.
Geothermal energy: The best thing about geothermal is that it's consistent and reliable. The bad thing is that it requires you to drill a deep hole in the ground. Many places in the world have frequent earthquakes, and geothermal wells can be easily damaged by a higher magnitude earthquake. In Canada, we have a thing called the Canadian Shield, which is a huge ass chunk of central and eastern Canada that is solid rock. Other countries have similar areas where surface soil only goes down 100m or so, and after that it's solid. Geothermal wells go down by the kilometers. The main issue, in my opinion, is freelance contractors going around and drilling everywhere. There have been cases of large sinkholes created because contractors didn't do their geography/geology homework. There are even rumours of earthquakes being caused by drilling, but I haven't paid much attention to this so somebody else can say something about it.
Biofuel and ethanol: Fantastic if you're using bio waste, such as from organic landfills or liquified waste from the food industry. Not as good if you're planting fields of biofuel crops and using the harvest to make gasoline instead of food. Even worse if you're planting only fields of biofuel crops and nothing else because you want to make fuel, cue skyrocketing food prices. Also needs a lot of arable land (as you said in your post).
Hydrogen: Amazing, extremely clean, potentially extremely efficient... currently extremely not efficient and expensive and only has small-scale applications. The previous generation expected us to have fuel cells powering every flying car by now. O wait.
Algae fuel: I think this has potential, there are some downsides I can think of but none are really that significant.
Biomass briquettes: Being used in developing countries, I think it has good potential. Biogas digestion: Also being used in developing countries, especially in South Asia, really good for helping poor farming communities get on their feet. Floating wind farms: A more feasible version of the space solar energy concept, main difficulty is getting the electricity from its source to the cities, where deep sea cables can be difficult and energy loss over long distances is also an issue.
The thing that irks me is that all of the above technologies are very similar in development to what we've seen in microcomputing over the last half century. In my opinion the only thing that is holding us back is technological development, which requires funding and public focus.
Regarding happyft's post about the Ozone Layer. The Montreal Protocol that got the ball rolling for CFC bans was the first successful win for climate environmentalists, and probably will be the only one for a long time. A lot of us really can't appreciate how important stopping the depletion of the Ozone Layer was. There would be a lot of weird shit happening if we allowed that to keep going. And you thought that sunburn was bad.
Ok i understand that there not all amazing at the moment, take electric cars, they SUCK SO BAD at the moment but given 10 years i think they will be nearly there. Regards solar power, there is such a huge boost in solar panels on roofs in England at the moments its unreal, goverment initiative of reduced prices on them being fitting is helping i guess, and just in my little housing area lone (about 30 houses i see) 5 have solar panels on the there roofs. The sun doesn't have to be strong for them to take in energy it just needs to be out and not hidden behind a cloud, that could be for 2hours a day and it could be enough to do something, without the proper levels of what is needed for them to convert sunlight into energy we can't comment though i guess.
I remember just a couple months ago a politician on the west coast trying to not get funding for a solar/wind farm, and it just seemed ridiculous but his point was that it was "too expensive" to run and get them up and running. People will just lie to save a buck, it's really sad.
Right now a lot of solar/wind require subsidies to make them economical, but they're closing the cost per kilowatt very quickly. A lot of estimates say that some solar/wind installations will reach parity with fossil fuel generation at the consumer end by 2015. Of course, then consumer price of energy might just fall, so it's complex, but it's reaching the point where it will be soon economical without subsidy.
I think that's just more evidence for the fact that we need to plough as much investment into this as possible-- you want to be ahead of the technology/infrastructure curve for renewables so you can sell tech/manufacturing capacity and save on infrastructure down the line-- it's just good public policy to transition this way.
Imagine being able to store the energy from the solar-wind farms indefinitely!!
Dude has managed to create a battery capable of basically sustaining itself indefinitely. This "Grid-level storage" makes it so things that are deemed "inefficient" energy sources no longer become inefficient because the energy can be stored for massively long periods of time. Right now, the way the grid works, everything is in constant demand and constant supply. If someone hits a transformer down the street, your power goes out until they can re-establish that connection of power.
This guy and his idea really get me going, and make me incredibly excited for the next 20-30 years to transpire. If he can manage to execute this product correctly, electricity will be free, everything can go on the grid, and we'll be emission free. Thus, removing our fossil-fuel crutch, and helping reduce the carbon footprint.
we can see 7 centralized locations throughout the United States Midwest/southern regions that link the entire nations electricity together.
Imagine every state having a minimum # of wind farms needed or they didn't meet the gov'ts regulation.
I hope one day I can make a map in ArcGIS that shows at least 75-100 wind farms minimum per state, and those states were running solely on those wind farms.
this would be a HUGE infrastructure change, which the US has been in dire need of change for the better part of a decade. We have a terrible infrastructure score, this could be a positive step into fixing that
A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can.
tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders.
What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year?
Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth:
Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can.
tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders.
What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year?
Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth:
Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
I did a huge semester long project on Hydraulic fracturing for senior year to be able to graduate, and damn, I'm so glad i live in Texas, where a large amount of Hydraulic fracturing is occurring. This is the next step in our energy consumption but i really hope we move off our oil teet someday and can make something more renewable in the near future.
I haven't made up my mind on the subject. I feel that having a giant gaping hole in the ozone layer that continually gets worse can only be a bad thing, but as far as reducing emissions, there is no way to get the entire world to line up behind that and polluting still provides a comparative advantage ... Unfixable problem. I have a lot of faith That when warming becomes a truly worrisome problem, science will arrive to save the day (while hurling insults at us like a dentist whose advice is never heeded and who is nevertheless called upon to fix things at the 11th hour)
I would like to give the op some props though for being one of the few Tlers open minded and smart enough to change his mind when provided with compelling evidence and I'm going to be perusing some of those links myself.
On July 27 2012 02:37 dvorakftw wrote: People are going to be so stunned a few years from now when the cause of global warming is discovered and it turns out to be + Show Spoiler +
always thought it was kinda pompous and really arrogant of people to think, "We are strong enough to fuck up the entire world climate in the last 50 years, here's exactly how we did it, and theres nothing you can do about it approach."
the sun is way bigger than us guys, he really does have more of an impact than most people in this thread would like to admit.
good article didn't know they were trying to take this to the EPA, very nice :D
On July 27 2012 02:37 eits wrote: I did a huge semester long project on Hydraulic fracturing for senior year to be able to graduate, and damn, I'm so glad i live in Texas, where a large amount of Hydraulic fracturing is occurring. This is the next step in our energy consumption but i really hope we move off our oil teet someday and can make something more renewable in the near future.
Oh yeah, solar and nuclear are going to be dominant in about another half-century if we can just get government away from them and allow the same free market process that took us from 3 channel TV and party-line human-operator telephones to world wide global telecommunications in a few decades to work its magic in energy.
On July 27 2012 02:26 Pandemona wrote: Ok i understand that there not all amazing at the moment, take electric cars, they SUCK SO BAD at the moment but given 10 years i think they will be nearly there. Regards solar power, there is such a huge boost in solar panels on roofs in England at the moments its unreal, goverment initiative of reduced prices on them being fitting is helping i guess, and just in my little housing area lone (about 30 houses i see) 5 have solar panels on the there roofs. The sun doesn't have to be strong for them to take in energy it just needs to be out and not hidden behind a cloud, that could be for 2hours a day and it could be enough to do something, without the proper levels of what is needed for them to convert sunlight into energy we can't comment though i guess.
Oh I definitely agree, with government incentives and initiatives, renewables are a lot more feasible. In North America there's an industry that is booming right now, basically if you 'qualify' with a large enough roof (such as warehouses, industrial complexes or commercial buildings) they "buy" your roof to set up solar panels, and then pay you a % per month of the profit they get.
The thing is, these funding for these incentives aren't infinite. They are designed to boost the industry and encourage innovation and technological development. However, a lot of big companies are taking advantage of these programs and are finding loopholes to do the minimum possible to qualify for the bonus money but aren't participating in bettering the industry.
A lot of the nice increases we see on these graphs are due to sustained public pressure towards funding for solar/wind infrastructure and for technological development so that the production and manufacturing of renewables reaches an economic level. These two trends are ones which give me hope that things aren't so bad that we should despair. But they aren't so good either that we should get complacent and think the problem solved, because in addition to continuing to invest in renewables, we need to actively work towards limiting / eliminating fossil fuel usage in whatever ways we can.
tldr; the battle is neither lost nor won, ignore people that try to push the 'climate change is inevitable line, so lets just keep on doin like we're doin' -- that perspective originally comes from oil/energy companies PR folders.
What do those charts look like after Spain's huge solar scam trashed their economy and all of Barack's buddies closed up shop this year?
Here's a chart that isn't designed to create an illusion of amazing outstanding growth:
Renewables is going to shrink even more as fracking and shales take off. Hoorah for US energy independence and great jobs and low energy prices and a growing economy!
This was what I was trying to get at, thank you dvorakftw. I don't mean to be harsh on you caradoc, but the reality is that short term economic goals has priority over a long term economic future. While having a reliable renewable energy source is what everyone wants, governments would rather have the quick and cheap "cleaner" fossil fuels.
Also, I think Al Gore is a sensationalist. I appreciate his enthusiasm for the environmental movement, but a lot of the time he's giving some really bad publicity.
This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
Edit: @Pandemona. Go read Alpino's post at the bottom of this page and tell me I am still being extreme or harsh on these people. lol.
Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
Your taking it a bit extreme in your post though! I agree with you 90% but your argument seems bit to hate felt. Nothing wrong with helping out with renewable energy sources and changing the way things are run, eg cars from petrol to electric is a great step. Even if (which i agree with) humans are not effecting climate change, we still need to find different ways to run our everyday products due to say in 500 years there is suppsoidly going to be no "x" "y" or "z" left to use.
Totally agree with the rest of the post though xD enviromentalists live off the earth like they did in the stone ages, but still do the stupid things like travel to conventions on aeroplanes and take the goverments money etcetc its quite hilarious. Take the G8 summits, every 6-12months its hosted in some ridiculous location and half the world hop in their jets and fly to it and travel everywhere in huge limo's wtih crap Miles Per Gallon fuel ratios and think they are help changing the world, well you know theres a thing called a conference call or even skype ffs xD
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
On July 27 2012 03:12 Thorakh wrote: ]Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” Emo Philips
On July 27 2012 03:12 Thorakh wrote: ]Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
“I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.” Emo Philips
Oh wow. What a great quote . I got a good laugh out of the first AGW denialist Thorakh was responding to, but you just doubled the fun
Hmm.. also something meaningful to add. I am very confident that humans will find a way to flourish underground or through geo-engineering alter the climate. There's nothing like the threat of disaster to spur technological innovation and change. We just have too much technology and industry to be completely at the mercy of mother nature IMO. But who knows how bad it will be?
And for those fearmongering about the global economy crashing if we leave it in the ground, here's an article on what actually happens to profits from oil/gas extraction.
over half of profits continually buying back their own stock? (Which is then funneled back into stock-as-compensation for senior execs), yeah, I think we can do without more income disparity.
billions and billions spent on disinformation? Yeah, a misinformed population sure helps the economy run more efficiently.
The Big Five oil companies – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell – are slated to announce their 2012 second-quarter profits later this week.
We can expect these companies, all of which rank in the top 10 of the “Fortune 500 Global Ranking,” to reveal billions of dollars more in profits, after earning $375 million in profits per day in 2011 ($261,000 per minute), and $368 million per day in the first three-months of 2012 — bringing their combined profits to $1 trillion from 2001 through 2011.
Below is a quick look at just how much these Big Oil companies are making, and where they are spending their billions in profits.
Big Oil’s Big Profits, In 24 Hours
The five biggest oil companies earned a combined profit of $375 million per day, or a record $137 billion profit for the year, in 2011, despite reducing their oil production.
In 60 seconds, these five companies earned $261,000 — more than 96 percent of American households make in one year.
These five oil companies received $6.6 million in federal tax breaks every day.
In 2011, the three largest domestic public oil companies spent $100 million of their profits each day, or over 50 percent, buying back their own stock to enrich their board, senior managers, and largest share holders.
The entire oil and gas industry spent on average $400,000 each day lobbying senators and representatives to weaken public health safeguards and keep big oil tax breaks, totaling nearly $150 million.
Each CEO of the Big Five companies received an average of $60,110 in compensation per day last year. On average, their pay jumped 55 percent in 2011. Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s compensation came close to $100,000 per day last year.
Millions in Political Contributions and Lobbying
Despite ranking as some of the most successful companies in the world, big oil and gas companies continue to receive $4 billion in tax breaks each year.
The oil and gas industry has already given over $30.5 million in federal campaign contributions this year, with a whopping 88 percent going to Republicans.
Big Oil has spent an additional $37 million on lobbying Congress this year, with the top spenders being Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Koch Industries and BP.
Their efforts are paying off. This is the most anti-environment Congress in history, with the House of Representatives averaging one anti-environment vote per day, or a total 247 votes through mid-June. The biggest beneficiary of these votes has been Big Oil. The House voted to enrich the oil and gas industry 109 times, a total 44 percent of its anti-environment votes.
The House is on track to collect a record amount of oil industry contributions this cycle, having already reached 2008 and 2010 levels. And these are direct donations only — it does not include Super PAC spending or other campaign assistance.
Outside Interests and Big Oil Allies Spending Tens of Millions More to Influence the Energy Debate
Fueled by Koch Industries and other Big Oil interests, the industry is spending hundreds of millions to fund false ads in this year’s elections. According to the Annenberg Public Policy Center, 85 percent of the dollars have funded false ad, during a season where most advertising have focused on energy.
Pro-Romney outside interest groups spent $24.6 million on energy ads through June 24, according to Kantar Media CMAG data. This is more than ten-times the amount spent by pro-Obama groups, which spent $2.3 million on energy spots.
American Energy Alliance, Americans for Prosperity, American Future Fund, and Crossroads GPS – the top outside pro-oil and pro-Romney interest group spenders – have spent a total $24.9 million on deceptive ads, many of them energy-related, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center.
Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity has devoted more than 90 percent of its ad spending to energy ads. Two of the Americans for Prosperity ads pushed patently false claims — roundly debunked by fact checkers — that the stimulus funded jobs overseas.
Fact checkers have thoroughly debunked these anti-clean energy ads. Both Politifact and the Washington Post Fact Checker have given the ad their worst ratings of “pants on fire” and four Pinocchios, respectively. Politifact found all three examples used to be false, with the ad stringing together “alarming” soundbites that are “ultimately ridiculous.”
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
On July 27 2012 03:42 radscorpion9 wrote: Oh wow. What a great quote . I got a good laugh out of the first AGW denialist Thorakh was responding to, but you just doubled the fun
And then I ask a thought experiment, change the title to "Belief the Sun Revolves Around the Earth" in the early 1600s and which side Galileo would be.
And then I ask a thought experiment, change the title to "Belief the Sun Revolves Around the Earth" in the early 1600s and which side Galileo would be.
My goodness, are you for real? You realise that the belief that the sun revolves around the earth came from religion and not science, right? The two cases are incomparable.
By use of the scientific method climatologists show that global warming is anthropogenic.
And then I ask a thought experiment, change the title to "Belief the Sun Revolves Around the Earth" in the early 1600s and which side Galileo would be.
My goodness, are you for real? You realise that the belief that the sun revolves around the earth came from religion and not science, right? These two cases are incomparable.
The scientific method shows that GW is anthropogenic.
Coupled with the fact that Galileo himself was a pretty religious guy (he wrote several philosophical/religious papers in addition to his scientific works) shows that it was a small, powerful, crazy minority of religious people who were repressing him.
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
Replacing things like engines to generate less CO2 does not decrease the amount of CO2. Cars still increase CO2. All that you are advocating is a decrease in the exponential INCREASE in CO2 in the atmosphere. And if you take even a glance at the numbers you will realize this makes no difference at all, especially when you consider that each plant that opens each day in China offsets thousands and thousands of hybrid cars.
You are fighting a losing battle. Even if the entire United States went into the stone age, China and other industrializing countries would still be increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why reversing the trend would in fact require a global economic depression.
But you seem to think that using solar energy and recycling more is gonna fix the problem over time, which affirms my point that such people don't care about facts or numbers, only the feeling that they are impacting the world.
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
Replacing things like engines to generate less CO2 does not decrease the amount of CO2. Cars still increase CO2. All that you are advocating is a decrease in the exponential INCREASE in CO2 in the atmosphere. And if you take even a glance at the numbers you will realize this makes no difference at all, especially when you consider that each plant that opens each day in China offsets thousands and thousands of hybrid cars.
You are fighting a losing battle. Even if the entire United States went into the stone age, China and other industrializing countries would still be increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why reversing the trend would in fact require a global economic depression.
But you seem to think that using solar energy and recycling more is gonna fix the problem over time, which affirms my point that such people don't care about facts or numbers, only the feeling that they are impacting the world.
Well no fucking shit if China just does its own thing and fucks everyone it won't work, amazing logical conclusion there.
There's also other parts of this discussion that you completely ignore. CO2 has to do with things in addition to "global warming." Reversing the trend doesn't require a depression, because doing nothing still wouldn't reverse the trend. You have to do something to clean up the environment and lower the amount of man made CO2 per year. Doing stuff = jobs, work, etc. Once it's down to a certain point natural mechanisms can get back to doing what they're supposed to.
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
Replacing things like engines to generate less CO2 does not decrease the amount of CO2. Cars still increase CO2. All that you are advocating is a decrease in the exponential INCREASE in CO2 in the atmosphere. And if you take even a glance at the numbers you will realize this makes no difference at all, especially when you consider that each plant that opens each day in China offsets thousands and thousands of hybrid cars.
You are fighting a losing battle. Even if the entire United States went into the stone age, China and other industrializing countries would still be increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why reversing the trend would in fact require a global economic depression.
But you seem to think that using solar energy and recycling more is gonna fix the problem over time, which affirms my point that such people don't care about facts or numbers, only the feeling that they are impacting the world.
Well no fucking shit if China just does its own thing and fucks everyone it won't work, amazing logical conclusion there.
Reversing the trend doesn't require a depression, because doing nothing still wouldn't reverse the trend. You have to do something to clean up the environment and lower the amount of man made CO2 per year. Once it's down to a certain point natural mechanisms can get back to doing what they're supposed to.
Clearly you didn't understand my argument, because your response doesn't make sense. I'm saying even if you were to completely eliminate 100% of the CO2 emission in the US, meaning shut down every single plant, car, engine everywhere, the global CO2 concentration would still be INCREASING, just at a slower rate.
I'm saying even in a completely impossible environmental dream scenario, things would not be getting better. The only way things could be better would be to go back to a time before industrialization, which would entail mass deaths like the world has never seen. It can't be called anything other than delusion to think that buying some solar panels and recycling and driving more efficient cars is going to "save the planet."
Some addictions are rewarded by how our society is configured right now, oil addiction, power addiction, money addiction, those addictions affect the world badly. Other addictions like alchol addiction, porn addiction, cigarrette addiction are seen as devils by our society, those addictions affect mostly only the person involved but with a much more palpable outcome.
Things are wrong.
Human mentality needs to change, right now. Or we unite as human beings(not countrymen or other egoistical shit) and save humanity(the planet will survive even if we are trying our best to kill it, what will go away is the human parasite) or we make our individualistic fortresses and die each of us alone knowing we were part of yet another generation who could have changed things for the best.
People are blinded by "economics", money and imaginary lines in maps. We have all the resources in this planet we need for everyone to live decent lifes but we spend it all on getting fat and not being efficient with our raw materials. Raw materials aren't worth shit of money and this is the most bullcrap there is in this world, we have knowledge of science of technology, they are an intellectual fortune possible for anyone who dives in science but what happens is the following: technology and scientific work adds up to the price of something, it's like creating shit out of nothing! I understand why it needs to have a higher price but in practice this shows how our society is hellbent on destroying the planet and not using its resources efficiently. What we have physically and a lot of time is not renewable(raw materials) we put a low price like it's not worth its time, this raw material is what makes us grow, if we shared technology and scientific knowledge we could develop phones that are not supposed to last 2 months. We could have less things but ones that are well-built and supposed to last because raw materials won't last forever. We live in a word of consumerism in which a good product means "works awesome but doesn't last". This is not smart use of our resources, I mean that's not smart use of our resources if we are not thinking about gaining money. AND that's the problem, monetary systems are not adequate to the technology and knowledge we have, we can have everything if we work for it the right way, but right now some people get "everything" easy(a lot of times not the scientists who make wonderful products). "
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - If we shared our technological gains scientists would have so much to work with that not only science would advance faster but we would be able to use that technology to solve a lot of problems. In a monetary system we wouldn't because the scientists are not working for the common good, they are working for their paychecks in a company whose goal is not common good, it is to get a CEOs paycheck bigger by the end of the year(and if it all caused global crysis it matters not they just get fired from the company with their 400mil bonuses already accounted for). The monetary system corrupted our culture and right now I think we are doomed. + Show Spoiler +
I'm pretty sure some guys will be able to profit exponentially and proportinally more as closer we get to complete depletion of earth's resources and subsequent crysis.
"I later calculated that all the destruction and wasted resources spent on WWII could have easily provided for every human need on the planet. Since that time I've watched humanity set the stage for it's own extinction. I've watched as the precious finite resources are perpetually wasted and destroyed in the name of profit and 'free' markets. I've watched the social values of society be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism and mindless consumption, and I have watched as the monetary powers control the political structure of supposedly free societies. - I'm 94 years old now, and I'm afraid my disposition is the same as it was 75 years ago: This $hit's got to go! " - Jacques Fresco
I'm not gonna address the denialism because that's just laughable. Change today, trash your car.
On July 27 2012 04:57 Alpino wrote: Some addictions are rewarded by how our society is configured right now, oil addiction, power addiction, money addiction, those addictions affect the world badly. Other addictions like alchol addiction, porn addiction, cigarrette addiction are seen as devils by our society, those addictions affect mostly only the person involved but with a much more palpable outcome.
Things are wrong.
Human mentality needs to change, right now. Or we unite as human beings(not countrymen or other egoistical shit) and save humanity(the planet will survive even if we are trying our best to kill it, what will go away is the human parasite) or we make our individualistic fortresses and die each of us alone knowing we were part of yet another generation who could have changed things for the best.
People are blinded by "economics", money and imaginary lines in maps. We have all the resources in this planet we need for everyone to live decent lifes but we spend it all on getting fat and not being efficient with our raw materials. Raw materials aren't worth shit of money and this is the most bullcrap there is in this world, we have knowledge of science of technology, they are an intellectual fortune possible for anyone who dives in science but what happens is the following: technology and scientific work adds up to the price of something, it's like creating shit out of nothing! I understand why it needs to have a higher price but in practice this shows how our society is hellbent on destroying the planet and not using its resources efficiently. What we have physically and a lot of time is not renewable(raw materials) we put a low price like it's not worth its time, this raw material is what makes us grow, if we shared technology and scientific knowledge we could develop phones that are not supposed to last 2 months. We could have less things but ones that are well-built and supposed to last because raw materials won't last forever. We live in a word of consumerism in which a good product means "works awesome but doesn't last". This is not smart use of our resources, I mean that's not smart use of our resources if we are not thinking about gaining money. AND that's the problem, monetary systems are not adequate to the technology and knowledge we have, we can have everything if we work for it the right way, but right now some people get "everything" easy(a lot of times not the scientists who make wonderful products). "
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - If we shared our technological gains scientists would have so much to work with that not only science would advance faster but we would be able to use that technology to solve a lot of problems. In a monetary system we wouldn't because the scientists are not working for the common good, they are working for their paychecks in a company whose goal is not common good, it is to get a CEOs paycheck bigger by the end of the year(and if it all caused global crysis it matters not they just get fired from the company with their 400mil bonuses already accounted for). The monetary system corrupted our culture and right now I think we are doomed. + Show Spoiler +
I'm pretty sure some guys will be able to profit exponentially and proportinally more as closer we get to complete depletion of earth's resources and subsequent crysis.
"I later calculated that all the destruction and wasted resources spent on WWII could have easily provided for every human need on the planet. Since that time I've watched humanity set the stage for it's own extinction. I've watched as the precious finite resources are perpetually wasted and destroyed in the name of profit and 'free' markets. I've watched the social values of society be reduced into a base artificiality of materialism and mindless consumption, and I have watched as the monetary powers control the political structure of supposedly free societies. - I'm 94 years old now, and I'm afraid my disposition is the same as it was 75 years ago: This $hit's got to go! " - Jacques Fresco
I'm not gonna address the denialism because that's just laughable. Change today, trash your car.
And after you trash your car, trash your computer. The internet and video games require energy too you know!
I calculated that all the nonsense and wasted time spent on your rant could have easily provided for every person on TL to reach GrandMaster by next season.
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
Replacing things like engines to generate less CO2 does not decrease the amount of CO2. Cars still increase CO2. All that you are advocating is a decrease in the exponential INCREASE in CO2 in the atmosphere. And if you take even a glance at the numbers you will realize this makes no difference at all, especially when you consider that each plant that opens each day in China offsets thousands and thousands of hybrid cars.
You are fighting a losing battle. Even if the entire United States went into the stone age, China and other industrializing countries would still be increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why reversing the trend would in fact require a global economic depression.
But you seem to think that using solar energy and recycling more is gonna fix the problem over time, which affirms my point that such people don't care about facts or numbers, only the feeling that they are impacting the world.
Well no fucking shit if China just does its own thing and fucks everyone it won't work, amazing logical conclusion there.
Reversing the trend doesn't require a depression, because doing nothing still wouldn't reverse the trend. You have to do something to clean up the environment and lower the amount of man made CO2 per year. Once it's down to a certain point natural mechanisms can get back to doing what they're supposed to.
Clearly you didn't understand my argument, because your response doesn't make sense. I'm saying even if you were to completely eliminate 100% of the CO2 emission in the US, meaning shut down every single plant, car, engine everywhere, the global CO2 concentration would still be INCREASING, just at a slower rate.
I'm saying even in a completely impossible environmental dream scenario, things would not be getting better. The only way things could be better would be to go back to a time before industrialization, which would entail mass deaths like the world has never seen. It can't be called anything other than delusion to think that buying some solar panels and recycling and driving more efficient cars is going to "save the planet."
1. Doesn't read what I wrote. 2. Responds to arguments I didn't make. 3. Assumes I don't understand what he meant.
A+ post.
No, I understand your post perfectly, it's just stupid.
Why are you focusing only on the US? Clearly in any dream scenario change wouldn't just be in the USA. Why do you ignore the fact that there are ways to actively reduce the amount of CO2 already in the environment, not just reduce the amount we produce? Why do you ignore the fact that there are other environment issues besides CO2?
And what happens if we're wrong? Nothing bad at all. We develop more efficient energy sources, make our drinking water cleaner, the air we breath cleaner, and our soil less polluted. We waste less stuff.
Where's the downside to improving efficiency and alternative energy? Where is it?
The NAS said that between 1,300 and 2,600 fatalities and at least 97,000 injuries were caused by auto size reduction ushered in by fuel standards.
I'm sure it's nice to believe we are all viciously unfairly oppressed by Evil Big Oil and the Evil Super Rich but the truth is solar power has been hyped as the great savior for over half a century now and it is LESS EFFICIENT than what we already have now. The first electric cars were made in the Nineteenth century and even today they remain LESS EFFICIENT than what we already have now.
When their time comes it will be their time but until them throwing away hundreds of billions of dollars on an egostroke that you are doing good things to save the world is a luxury we shouldn't indulge in.
The NAS said that between 1,300 and 2,600 fatalities and at least 97,000 injuries were caused by auto size reduction ushered in by fuel standards.
I'm sure it's nice to believe we are all viciously unfairly oppressed by Evil Big Oil and the Evil Super Rich but the truth is solar power has been hyped as the great savior for over half a century now and it is LESS EFFICIENT than what we already have now. The first electric cars were made in the Nineteenth century and even today they remain LESS EFFICIENT than what we already have now.
When their time comes it will be their time but until them throwing away hundreds of billions of dollars on an egostroke that you are doing good things to save the world is a luxury we shouldn't indulge in.
How much research has been put into fossil fuel power generation? I'd guess a lot more than electric/solar cars. Look at the advances made in just the last 10 years, in BOTH areas! We see fuel efficiency numbers in petrol powered cars no one ever dreamed of and electric cars that aren't scrap. The fact is fossil fuels are a brute force answer to energy, one that we have refined to be very efficient. The harsh truth however, is that they will run out eventually. Isn't it better to research an alternative now, while we still are in a good place?
On July 27 2012 06:31 Bigtony wrote: The fact is fossil fuels are a brute force answer to energy, one that we have refined to be very efficient. The harsh truth however, is that they will run out eventually. Isn't it better to research an alternative now, while we still are in a good place?
We have at least hundreds of years to do it. Diverting resources and effort to this is actually short-sighted as well as bad economics.
On July 27 2012 06:31 Bigtony wrote: The fact is fossil fuels are a brute force answer to energy, one that we have refined to be very efficient. The harsh truth however, is that they will run out eventually. Isn't it better to research an alternative now, while we still are in a good place?
We have at least hundreds of years to do it. Diverting resources and effort to this is actually short-sighted as well as bad economics.
I'm not going to contest this, because I've seen articles on both sides. Some say we will flat out run out within 100 years (not that long). Some say several hundred years. Some say it wont run out fro 100+ years but in 30-50 the cost will go up exponentially. I'm not sure who to believe, but I doubt it's a waste of resources to refine our alternative energy research.
This is one of the best threads I have read in a long time. Very well done sir!
I'm pretty sure It will get all used up. I highly doubt large corporations will do anything since they only care about money. I do believe that it shouldn't get burned and we should take the bullet. It's better to have a shit or non-existent economy for 10-20 years than to have a world in which it's near impossible to live on. As time goes on, the sun will only get hotter as well.
Sometimes people need to learn things the hard way. Unfortunately this means punishing all other life on earth but we'll learn eventually. Sad that it will be too late to matter.
On July 27 2012 06:31 Bigtony wrote: The fact is fossil fuels are a brute force answer to energy, one that we have refined to be very efficient. The harsh truth however, is that they will run out eventually. Isn't it better to research an alternative now, while we still are in a good place?
We have at least hundreds of years to do it. Diverting resources and effort to this is actually short-sighted as well as bad economics.
Without contesting the number, you have to shy away from exporting any of that oil-equivalence if any of his numbers should count towards the years he is spewing right and left. Diverting resources to developing technologies with the ability to compete with oil if oil-price increases is not exactly shortsighted. As I said earlier: The price of 3 $ per liter is a safety-net if all else fails. As people have said before: Electricity, ethanol, hydrogen and several other compounds are entering the fuel-market and with its current development, the price of using those instead of oil is nearing competitive status even without an increase in fuel-price (For hydrogen it is already rather effective, but safety is a concern for non-scientists since 200 bar of pressure with explosive gas is a bit worrying.).
On July 27 2012 02:56 jdseemoreglass wrote: This movement has NEVER been about facts or reality or numbers, it's about having an ideology which makes you feel smart and moral and better than other people. Anyone who took an honest and objective look at the facts would realize that even if global warming is entirely anthropogenic there is absolutely no way to reverse the trend without leaping towards the stone age.
So a few environmentalists are finally catching on to the fact after all these years that achieving their desires would necessarily bankrupt the planet and lead to widespread death, poverty, and suffering? You cannot reverse the carbon release. It's simply not possible without completely turning back industrialization, which would entail starvation, poverty, etc. There is zero doubt in my mind that a global economic collapse will lead to FAR more death and suffering than whatever a couple degree increase in temperature will bring.
Most people though will keep the delusional hope alive for "renewable energy," not so much as to provide a viable alternative as to provide a means to criticize the current system and people running it.
There's absolutely no contesting that even if "global warming" isn't real, we're doing serious damage to our environment, in particular to our oceans, atmosphere, and farm land that will probably kill everyone. The changes needed to slow and in some cases reverse this damage won't "put us back to the stone age." How on earth is reducing the use of fossil fuels and replacing them with things that generate less CO2 and pollutants (nuclear, wind, solar, something else), going to put us back to the stone age?
How will more responsible fishing and farming and marketing methods put us back to the stone age? How will reducing waste and better recycling methods put us back to the stone age?
There's no downside to going green if you do it right.
Replacing things like engines to generate less CO2 does not decrease the amount of CO2. Cars still increase CO2. All that you are advocating is a decrease in the exponential INCREASE in CO2 in the atmosphere. And if you take even a glance at the numbers you will realize this makes no difference at all, especially when you consider that each plant that opens each day in China offsets thousands and thousands of hybrid cars.
You are fighting a losing battle. Even if the entire United States went into the stone age, China and other industrializing countries would still be increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is why reversing the trend would in fact require a global economic depression.
But you seem to think that using solar energy and recycling more is gonna fix the problem over time, which affirms my point that such people don't care about facts or numbers, only the feeling that they are impacting the world.
Basically your argument boils down to : Since we cannot do everything, let us do nothing. Nice black and white fallacy.
On July 27 2012 04:13 Thorakh wrote: By use of the scientific method climatologists show that global warming is anthropogenic.
The great scientific method which gives us stuff like this.
I see nothing scientific in the article you mention, so I have no idea what are you trying to point out. Whole article is just poor logic mixed with misinformation.
On July 27 2012 07:38 Maxd11 wrote: Sometimes people need to learn things the hard way. Unfortunately this means punishing all other life on earth but we'll learn eventually. Sad that it will be too late to matter.
Its not only "other life" the effect on tropical and subtropical climate will make life harder for people there than it already is.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
Regarding the quotes: Ms Simpson has a healthy and standard scientific scepticism. I can respect that and there is nothing wrong with what she says. You only have to understand that she seems to be very clear about her scepticism being about the specific models used and not specifically denying the existance of AGW. Scepticism is healthy in any science and does not mean a rejection! These are very significant distinctions.
Dr. Kiminori is clearly commenting on the fearmongering in the media. He does not seem to question any part of the basis behind AGW. He actually seems to support it implicitly by telling the trueth will disappoint people and not claiming any competining theory.
Dr. Pal Brekke is clearly stating that the results are not perfect yet and I completely agree. AGW as a thesis does not seem in question here at all.
Mr Goldenberg is pretty frank in his rejection of AGW. I, however do question his rejection of something that has been proven at several instances, including in this thread.
Dr. Zágoni is somewhat stating a scientific thesis for rejection of AGW. Now, he just have to give a thesis for why the temperature has acted as it has the last 100 years.
Svensmark has actually contributed a lot to the theories and models used by IPCC. He has been pretty clear about his views and he actually do recognise AGW as a part of the problem although he is of the opinion that the sun is more important. Since this documentary he has contributed some interesting data showing effect of solar radiation. The big problem for Svensmarks theory is that nobody has been able to produce the effect needed for Solar radiaton to account for the temperature pattern...
Edit: And just for the record: There are other threads for discussing AGW. This thread is about carbon-cycle, the "potential" effect on GW and how to avoid it. Discussing AGW is a bit of a detour and does not give much progress.
Hmm 6 degrees, while that is rather significant and extremely significant in some places, I cannot equate that with destruction of the world, it's just changing the world. Some kinds of flora and fauna will perish, and new ones will flourish in their place.
On July 27 2012 19:48 Phenny wrote: Hmm 6 degrees, while that is rather significant and extremely significant in some places, I cannot equate that with destruction of the world, it's just changing the world. Some kinds of flora and fauna will perish, and new ones will flourish in their place.
Yeah sure, life will go on. That's some small comfort when contemplating our extinction.
Global warming is a lie. Composition of air and our atmosphere changes independently of humans. If we would be polluting earth for 1000 years, then there maybe would be some effect. But we are that doing for somewhat 60 years only so we are perfectly fine.
Did anyone notice that ice ages come and go from time to time, so changes in climate and temperature. Even if temperature would shift 5 degrees a year it would mean that new ice age is coming and its not our fault.
More money will naturally be invested into alternative energy once oil becomes too expensive. Ethanol and electric cars will look mighty attractive when the only oil left on earth is miles under the ocean. You should applaud high gas prices because it gets people thinking about alternatives.
It might be a bumpy transition, but society will find a way to continue.
On July 27 2012 21:18 M4nkind wrote: Global warming is a lie. Composition of air and our atmosphere changes independently of humans. If we would be polluting earth for 1000 years, then there maybe would be some effect. But we are that doing for somewhat 60 years only so we are perfectly fine.
Did anyone notice that ice ages come and go from time to time, so changes in climate and temperature. Even if temperature would shift 5 degrees a year it would mean that new ice age is coming and its not our fault.
Yeah, except all the proof is against your "idea".
On July 27 2012 21:18 M4nkind wrote: Global warming is a lie. Composition of air and our atmosphere changes independently of humans. If we would be polluting earth for 1000 years, then there maybe would be some effect. But we are that doing for somewhat 60 years only so we are perfectly fine.
Did anyone notice that ice ages come and go from time to time, so changes in climate and temperature. Even if temperature would shift 5 degrees a year it would mean that new ice age is coming and its not our fault.
The actual climate scientists rack their brains over math, physics, chemistry, biology, building computers etc., and do so for decades of their life. They all say there is global warming happening, and it is caused by human civilization. Suspiciously, the only people arguing against global warming happening and being man-made are doing so purely by playing with words.
Too bad the poll only has three "I agree" options. Why not an option which says something like,
"The financial implosion let banks consolidate a lot of resources and power, and going cold turkey would allow the energy industry to do the same", or,
"The effects of carbon on the climate are widely exaggerated/debated, And we won't reach a temperature that the earth hasn't seen before for hundreds/thousands of years"?
This post makes a lot of assumptions about what's correct and suggests there's only one real course of action. We could go steady on the path we're on, as long as we end up with some new technology that lets us go mostly solar or go to space. In spite of the doomsayers, the world is not going to end in less than a hundred years. Climate scientists have said similar things for the last 50 years; in fact some claimed that by the year 2000 we would already have catastrophe.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of money tied up in directing scientists what/how to research, and a lot of corruption too (as we saw with 'climategate', where the largest supporters of these ideas were shown to be faking data). I think one of the worst solutions is government intervention with some sort of carbon tax/tracking system. Sadly, if any solutions comes, I feel like that's exactly what we'll get. Which won't help at all, since financial penalties don't affect the population uniformly. Just see China's 'one child policy' for an example: the rich simply ignore it.
On July 27 2012 22:31 darkscream wrote: Too bad the poll only has three "I agree" options. Why not an option which says something like,
"The financial implosion let banks consolidate a lot of resources and power, and going cold turkey would allow the energy industry to do the same", or,
"The effects of carbon on the climate are widely exaggerated/debated, And we won't reach a temperature that the earth hasn't seen before for hundreds/thousands of years"?
This post makes a lot of assumptions about what's correct and suggests there's only one real course of action. We could go steady on the path we're on, as long as we end up with some new technology that lets us go mostly solar or go to space. In spite of the doomsayers, the world is not going to end in less than a hundred years. Climate scientists have said similar things for the last 50 years; in fact some claimed that by the year 2000 we would already have catastrophe.
No one is saying the world is going to end in a few decades. Christ, why is it that close to every one of you denialists feel the need to use this ridiculous hyperbole? It's possible something may cause daunting problems without our species going extinct much less ending the world.
On July 27 2012 22:31 darkscream wrote: Unfortunately, there's a lot of money tied up in directing scientists what/how to research, and a lot of corruption too (as we saw with 'climategate', where the largest supporters of these ideas were shown to be faking data). I think one of the worst solutions is government intervention with some sort of carbon tax/tracking system. Sadly, if any solutions comes, I feel like that's exactly what we'll get. Which won't help at all, since financial penalties don't affect the population uniformly. Just see China's 'one child policy' for an example: the rich simply ignore it.
They were shown to not be faking data in the multiple investigations that followed. Surprise surprise.
For once in my life I'd like to have a global warming discussion where we just accept the scientific facts and the opinions of the professionals as legitimate, you know the way we typically would in any other scenario when there isn't some political conviction forcing us to shut our eyes and disputing tons upon tons of published, peer reviewed science with literally anything but scientific research.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
On July 27 2012 02:59 Perdac Curall wrote: Your entire article is premised on the argument that burning all those fossil fuels will cause a 6 degree rise in temperature. This is false, and thus your whole argument is moot. There is no Scylla and Charybdis that we are between. This is a false dichotomy that has been created because of believing these so-called "scientists" who make this claim. The fact is that CO2 plays a very minor role in the overall greenhouse effect on the planet. 90% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. The other greenhouse gases all compete to play a role in the other 10%. Climate is mostly determined by solar and cosmic radiation. Whether the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes up 0.025% or 0.037% is of little consequence.
Why do you even post when you have no idea what you're talking about?
If not the people who actually study this field, the climatologists (and for your information, there is no dispute in this field that global warming exists and is manmade), then who do you trust? Random anti global warming blogs on the internet? Politicians? Your neighbors?
Here you go good sir, I will never deny someone some sources for further research if they ask for them.
“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC4 Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.” - Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Centre in Oslo. Brekke has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the sun and solar interaction with the Earth.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.
“Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.” – Prominent Hungarian Physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklós Zágoni reversed his view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic. Zágoni was once Hungary’s most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.
Go ahead and read it all that is only a very small sample, there are dozens more quotes from scientists all around the world. I would also suggest you check out the work of Henrik Svensmark and the CERN CLOUD experiments.
There are also scientists that don't believe in evolution. Taking little excerpts from people who have become skeptics doesn't really mean anything. We believe in evolution because a substantial amount of scientists believe in it too, we don't believe the minority on that one, so why should we do anything different for climate change?
How many scientists out of the entire global population do not believe in AGW? About the same amount of scientists that believe that religion can create miracles on demand.
Everyone I have talked to who doesn't believe in AGW actually just doesn't look at the science. They take little excerpts from blogs and random people and just believe what they say.
This site has some raw data that you can use to make your own judgement, although I will point you to the charts first. There is no "computer modelling", its just raw historical data represented on a graph. If we look at human advancements in technology, and the exponential rate at which people use cars and electricity and match that each year of CO2, I think its pretty obvious what is really happening.
wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
On July 28 2012 20:29 M4nkind wrote: wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
You say this as if it would have been a dude writing an essay over the weekend, but it is not. It was decades of daily full-time work over the physics involved, and global warming is the predicted result. If you are not satisfied with the data that was produced by working on the computer models, you will never get anything that you like better. We will all be dead and will not see what the world will look like in the next few centuries.
Perhaps there is something in biology being overlooked and it will turn out alright, plants thriving and a jungle enveloping all of the continents, perhaps with the help of new technologies. But the experts say it will probably suck, deserts will get bigger, etc.
Arguing about it all is beside the point, I feel. There are shitty debate techniques used to try to "win" arguments, while reality does not change through arguments. It is wasted effort that should rather be put into trying to engineer an economy that works without excessive pollution and CO2 emissions, without people flipping their shit because of missing current luxuries.
Personally, I could live on a planet like the home planet of House Harkonnen, if they have medicine against feeling shitty and getting cancer from the pollution, enough food and Internet.
On July 28 2012 20:29 M4nkind wrote: wouldn't you think that industrial age + modern age only coincides by accident with global temperature change? I mean that environmental studies are not as precise as physics. You cant calculate direct correlations between our polluting emissions and change in temperature. Environmentalists cannot prove, they can only guess.
I imagine if Earth would look like home planet of house Harkonnen then it would be polluted. But now we are totally not overdoing it. And studies of enviroment are quite new, only when tons of research will be done we could take their word for granted. I am not a believer I need hard data.
Problem is, by the time that research comes out we may already be past the point of no return 5 times over. At the moment, we should be investing WAY more in the search for alternative energy sources, and cleaner energy. IMO we're in the ff7 world right now, and that we're sucking way to much out of the earth and its going to get fucked. However the big companies don't want to invest inother sources because oil is still making an insane ammount of money, and in their eyes that is all that matters. But if the planet was to die....we're gone. Thats why we need to sort this out. We can't hedge all our bets that everything is ok...we need to prepare for the worst at all times....If we don't then we're fucked.
I don't care if we eventually find that its all bullshit, the world will be a MUCH better place if we were to find ways around using fossil fuels. We're already facing a fresh water shortage, imagine if the temp is to keep going up. That would mean even LESS water. We're already struggling with food.....should we not try and find a way that we can keep up food production too without resulting to using even more energy.
Is there evidence that this theorem is true? Shall we make a poll about it?
If something is proven its true, doesnt matter what people think about it. I agree that direct polution such as oil tank leaks and such are terrible, where as global pollution is speculative.
Oil spills are a really good way of showing how oil companies will do absolutely anything to avoid responsibility for damaging the earth and even pay lots of money to hide the evidence (such as with the masses of canvas/grass to cover the oil). Once they start doing that, you can pretty much assume they have the same attitude towards everything.
Enbridge doesn't seem to have a great track record either. It might be due to massive cost cutting on pipe material or engineering, that's pure speculation though.
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic By RICHARD A. MULLER
Published: July 30, 2012
Berkeley, Calif.
CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.
The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth's surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the "flattening" of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.
Just as important, our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the "Little Ice Age," a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we've learned from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little.
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect - extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn't change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.
It's a scientist's duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I've analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn't changed.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren't dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren't going to melt by 2035. And it's possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the "Medieval Warm Period" or "Medieval Optimum," an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to "global" warming is weaker than tenuous.
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.
Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.
Richard A. Muller, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of "Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines."
On a strangely somewhat laterally relevant side-note:
On July 29 2012 04:23 M4nkind wrote: I found this one a bit funny (sorry for that)
Is there evidence that this theorem is true? Shall we make a poll about it?
If something is proven its true, doesnt matter what people think about it. I agree that direct polution such as oil tank leaks and such are terrible, where as global pollution is speculative.
It's not an evidence problem, it's a political problem. Opinion polls are relevant in that sense. Don't be facetious... or are you making some other point that is not apparent?
global pollution speculative? No, it's evidence driven. stock markets and matters of faith are speculative. Science tries to avoid that.
On July 30 2012 15:53 RowdierBob wrote: So all we need to do is convince the nations of the world to shitcan the global economy?
Good luck!
Are there any solutions that are practicable in the real world?
I dunno, renewable energy seems pretty fucking good for the Chinese and German economy.
and how the hell does leaving it in the ground do anything bad for the economy? Oh, dear me, profits for big oil go down. They're hoarding money as it is. Money spent elsewhere is good for the economy.
And global warming under worst-case scenario, you can bet your ass, will do orders of magnitude more damage to this revered economy of yours.
The global warming debate only occurs in the USA or does it happen in other countries? In France there is no more real debate, GW is considered as a fact.
On July 30 2012 15:56 nojok wrote: The global warming debate only occurs in the USA or does it happen in other countries? In France there is no more real debate, GW is considered as a fact.
Well, it happens where big oil has a PR wing, which is primarily in the US, but also Canada, UK, etc. To a lesser extent elsewhere, but when there are vital civil societies that aren't being plundered/cut to ribbons by neoliberal governments, there's a pretty good buffer against the misinformation, whether through publicly available evidence, or regulations against some of the more blatant abuses and non factual claims made, influence peddling etc.
Also, PR is less effective (in terms of an investment, it's all about the bottom line to these people) in countries where there isn't large reserves-- PR misinformation is generally employed when there are oil/gas/coal/etc-related proposals for public land use, or high-impact projects (i.e. the whole disgusting 'ethical oil' campaign etc), which is to the detriment of the public interest, where the public is in a position to actually stymie development.
You don't see the same massive misinformation campaigns in petro state dictatorships because they can just shoot people. (Though really, we aren't as far off in NA as we like to tell ourselves). Though even there, the coverups are pretty prolific and disgusting (though still well documented in some cases). Can't have the international media reporting on abuses and sullying the shiny brands can we....
Oil spills are a really good way of showing how oil companies will do absolutely anything to avoid responsibility for damaging the earth and even pay lots of money to hide the evidence (such as with the masses of canvas/grass to cover the oil). Once they start doing that, you can pretty much assume they have the same attitude towards everything.
Enbridge doesn't seem to have a great track record either. It might be due to massive cost cutting on pipe material or engineering, that's pure speculation though.
honestly it makes me physically ill. Though the fact that the 'violations' sections takes up half the wikipedia page, shows in some ways how you can only swim against the tide of reality for so far in an information driven society. An interesting thing, although the Marshall, Michigan spill in 2010 is on the violations section, the coverup (in the above video) isn't mentioned. I might put it into the page if I get a few hours at some point and some good 'reliable' (ala wikipedia's guidelines) sources.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/50wiq.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Rocket_man02_-_melbourne_show_2005.jpg/800px-Rocket_man02_-_melbourne_show_2005.jpg)
(tongue partly in cheek)
![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/extrapolating.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/768YP.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LG00x.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/global_warming.png)
![[image loading]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/where-the-world-gets-its-energy.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a7/Climate_science_opinion2.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.utenergypoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Screen-Shot-2012-07-24-at-9.38.25-AM.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YVsEN.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.mathguide.com/lessons/pic-pythagorasT.gif)
