For all of you, conspiracy theorist and believers (UFO, Haarp, New World Order)

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#574760 29-Jan-2012 22:25

cgrew:Global Warming in my opinion seems to be more political then anything,

No, it's scientific and widely accepted as such, however it does become a political issue. I'm sure there's plenty of politicians what wish it would go away... but the thing about reality is it doesn't go away.

There seems to be this perception in the public that the "jury is still out" in the scientific community. This is not the case.

I still believe it's only a very vague theory.

You've got some catching up to do then.

I mean if it's such a threat, why are 'we' still using petroleum? It doesn't make any sense to me other then it makes for a good business prospect.

Viable alternatives aren't exactly forthcoming right now.

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#574764 29-Jan-2012 22:39

BurningBeard:
cgrew: I mean if it's such a threat, why are 'we' still using petroleum? It doesn't make any sense to me other then it makes for a good business prospect.

Viable alternatives aren't exactly forthcoming right now.

In regards to "why are 'we' still using petroleum?"... What is the problem to be solved here: carbon emission, or reliance on oil? Carbon emission may be solved by using "cleaner" fuel. Reliance on oil could be solved with using a different "fuel".

One such fuel that could reduce carbon emission and reduce the need of oil is ethanol, made from sugar cane. This is largely used in Brazil, where almost 100% of the fleet runs on both petrol or ethanol.

When you stop at the petrol station you can chose which one to use, based on price, etc. Our engines can't run on ethanol, and for years brazilian car makers released vehicles with different engines (ethanol or petrol). Now most of the cars there are "dual", in that you use whichever you want.

Although a "cleaner' running fuel there are a few problems with ethanol. First it costs more than oil to manufacture. Second, sugar cane requires large areas. Then there are obviously the greed side of farmers who rather plant sugar cane to make ethanol for fuel than sugar for consumption.

Next is the fact ethanol gives a lot less power than petrol. To get the same output as petrol you need a lot more ethanol in your tank, so prices should be 70% lower to justify it. Then you realise that making ethanol costs more, so the only way prices in Brazil are at this level is because the government pays a subsidy to farmers. When the government reduces the subsidy or is late paying, farmers change production to sugar, forcing the price at the pump to go up, due to scarcity - they control the market too now.

Then obviously farmers might think "damn this [soy|wheat|rice|potatoes|onion], I will plant sugar cane and sell ethanol, after all everyone needs fuel". We will run out of food at some point.

Oh, sure, we have eletricity... Just tells me where the power to recharge those cars will come from at some point? Nuclear plants? Coal-based generators? Water dam? All of these have huge impact in the environment. The demand for electricity alone would make our existing generation capability a joke.

Anywhere you look there will be trade offs.

Actually I'm wrong about potatoes - they might keep planting it to make vodka...

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#574782 30-Jan-2012 00:21

freitasm:Oh, sure, we have eletricity... Just tells me where the power to recharge those cars will come from at some point? Nuclear plants? Coal-based generators? Water dam? All of these have huge impact in the environment. The demand for electricity alone would make our existing generation capability a joke.

I noticed that you neglect to mention solar roofing or wind farms. Both are used in NZ and quite successfully, although, the price is quite high.

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#574798 30-Jan-2012 07:02

freitasm:
BurningBeard:
cgrew: I mean if it's such a threat, why are 'we' still using petroleum? It doesn't make any sense to me other then it makes for a good business prospect.

Viable alternatives aren't exactly forthcoming right now.

In regards to "why are 'we' still using petroleum?"... What is the problem to be solved here: carbon emission, or reliance on oil? Carbon emission may be solved by using "cleaner" fuel. Reliance on oil could be solved with using a different "fuel".

One such fuel that could reduce carbon emission and reduce the need of oil is ethanol, made from sugar cane. This is largely used in Brazil, where almost 100% of the fleet runs on both petrol or ethanol.

When you stop at the petrol station you can chose which one to use, based on price, etc. Our engines can't run on ethanol, and for years brazilian car makers released vehicles with different engines (ethanol or petrol). Now most of the cars there are "dual", in that you use whichever you want.

Although a "cleaner' running fuel there are a few problems with ethanol. First it costs more than oil to manufacture. Second, sugar cane requires large areas. Then there are obviously the greed side of farmers who rather plant sugar cane to make ethanol for fuel than sugar for consumption.

Next is the fact ethanol gives a lot less power than petrol. To get the same output as petrol you need a lot more ethanol in your tank, so prices should be 70% lower to justify it. Then you realise that making ethanol costs more, so the only way prices in Brazil are at this level is because the government pays a subsidy to farmers. When the government reduces the subsidy or is late paying, farmers change production to sugar, forcing the price at the pump to go up, due to scarcity - they control the market too now.

Then obviously farmers might think "damn this [soy|wheat|rice|potatoes|onion], I will plant sugar cane and sell ethanol, after all everyone needs fuel". We will run out of food at some point.

Oh, sure, we have eletricity... Just tells me where the power to recharge those cars will come from at some point? Nuclear plants? Coal-based generators? Water dam? All of these have huge impact in the environment. The demand for electricity alone would make our existing generation capability a joke.

Anywhere you look there will be trade offs.

Actually I'm wrong about potatoes - they might keep planting it to make vodka...

Alternative fuel..... Hydrogen Fuel Cell

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

LookingUp

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#574812 30-Jan-2012 08:38

codyc1515:
freitasm:Oh, sure, we have eletricity... Just tells me where the power to recharge those cars will come from at some point? Nuclear plants? Coal-based generators? Water dam? All of these have huge impact in the environment. The demand for electricity alone would make our existing generation capability a joke.

I noticed that you neglect to mention solar roofing or wind farms. Both are used in NZ and quite successfully, although, the price is quite high.

In the scheme of things, solar and wind power provide a pretty minor output, and are only actually useful when it's sunny or windy. If you're looking at solar to drive a car, do the math - a "reasonable" car these days will have an engine that produces more than 100kW. Check out the size of a 100W (no k) solar panel (approx 1m square) - you'd need 1000 of them, in sunlight, to produce the same on-demand power as a typical car engine. Batteries I hear you say, well you'll at the same scale as the solar panel problem - rough numbers you'd need about 100 typical car batteries to produce 100kW for an hour.

Ditto wind - fine to produce top-up power for a few houses, but you need to go REALLY big if you want to generate anything meaningful, and you need an alternative power source for when there's no wind.

Things are LookingUp.... A photo from my back yard :-)

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#574814 30-Jan-2012 08:39

A piece on WSJ today (conspiracy theory believers will says it's an "establishment paper" so not to be trusted, but whatever):

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

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#574820 30-Jan-2012 08:42

LookingUp:
codyc1515:
freitasm:Oh, sure, we have eletricity... Just tells me where the power to recharge those cars will come from at some point? Nuclear plants? Coal-based generators? Water dam? All of these have huge impact in the environment. The demand for electricity alone would make our existing generation capability a joke.

I noticed that you neglect to mention solar roofing or wind farms. Both are used in NZ and quite successfully, although, the price is quite high.

In the scheme of things, solar and wind power provide a pretty minor output, and are only actually useful when it's sunny or windy. If you're looking at solar to drive a car, do the math - a "reasonable" car these days will have an engine that produces more than 100kW. Check out the size of a 100W (no k) solar panel (approx 1m square) - you'd need 1000 of them, in sunlight, to produce the same on-demand power as a typical car engine. Batteries I hear you say, well you'll at the same scale as the solar panel problem - rough numbers you'd need about 100 typical car batteries to produce 100kW for an hour.

Ditto wind - fine to produce top-up power for a few houses, but you need to go REALLY big if you want to generate anything meaningful, and you need an alternative power source for when there's no wind.

Important this... "you need an alternative power source when there's no wind|sun". Electricity from the grid is generated/distributed on demand. There are no batteries in the generation side of the things, and batteries are not that efficient anyway.

Solar panels are VERY expensive, and albeit help reduce power bills, they won't pay themselves for years, a long term investment. Obviously every bit helps, but I don't have money left for that right now.

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#574831 30-Jan-2012 09:23

freitasm: A piece on WSJ today

And it's ticked off a lot of people. It's worth nothing that the WSJ rejected a scientifically accurate essay written by 255 members of the USNAS on the realities of climate change. It was later picked up by Science magazine - possibly "the nation's most important journal on scientific issues."

However I can't accuse the WSJ of pushing an agenda because it was listed as an opinion piece.

Speaking of opinion pieces...

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

The scientists who signed to WSJ editorial are:...
...a group of older and often retired weathermen, engineers, or otherwise not-climate-scientists.

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#574833 30-Jan-2012 09:25

BurningBeard: Speaking of opinion pieces...

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

The scientists who signed to WSJ editorial are:...
...a group of older and often retired weathermen, engineers, or otherwise not-climate-scientists.

As if older people wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't make contributions. Or is just for "hipsters"?

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#574836 30-Jan-2012 09:34

freitasm: As if older people wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't make contributions. Or is just for "hipsters"?

Ha, no, I think the thrust of his point was that they are retired and out of touch with the research (and by far a minority)

I haven't seen any discussion on any of the skeptic/science forums I visit, but the science blogs are beginning to erupt. I hope this story doesn't muddy the water of a sensitive and very important issue.

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#574861 30-Jan-2012 10:45

The article is a highly charged opinion piece. It is notable that the physicist referred to at the top of the WSJ article is not a signatory to the WSJ article, and you can bet the group asked him to sign.

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#575160 31-Jan-2012 08:36

gzt: The article is a highly charged opinion piece. It is notable that the physicist referred to at the top of the WSJ article is not a signatory to the WSJ article, and you can bet the group asked him to sign.

Science journalist Chris Mooney has had a dig at the tone of that opinion piece.

There has been a much justified uproar over last week’s Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which a group of scientific “skeptics” reiterate the old line that we don’t have to worry about global warming, and that those who do so are engaging in climate “alarmism.” Ample refutations have been penned; in some ways best of all, my friend Jamie Vernon showed that even hotbeds of leftwing extremism like Chevron, ExxonMobil, and the Pentagon are now concerned about and taking action on global warming.

The Wall Street Journal is, indeed, completely out in the cold on this matter.

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#575168 31-Jan-2012 09:02

Is there really any global warming occuring?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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#575170 31-Jan-2012 09:06

So what's the story?

.Some say there's a Global Warming due to emissions and greenhouse effect
.Some say there is not and it's just normal cycle
.Some report no increase in temperatures over years
.Some say temperatures alone no longer matter, only the peaks

So, who do you believe? Who got the strongest agenda?

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#575171 31-Jan-2012 09:09

freitasm: So what's the story?

.Some say there's a Global Warming due to emissions and greenhouse effect
.Some say there is not and it's just normal cycle
.Some report no increase in temperatures over years
.Some say temperatures alone no longer matter, only the peaks

So, who do you believe? Who got the strongest agenda?

Bottom line....They have no idea. But hey making bold and alarming press releases is a great way to get funding for ones pet project and income continuity.

Here is a crazy notion, lets give peace a chance.

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