jujuman13

I find it strange that someone, anyone can make a proposal and almost automatically the majority seize the idea and extol it as their sincere belief, usually without having any knowledge of what they are talking about.

Link.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaruherald/4064691a6571.html

Personally I find this article to be more illuminating.
Mankind cannot control the weather, so what Mr. A. Gore proposes is to suggest that humanity is doing just that.
I am not a scientist, I read articles in favour of Mr. Gore, I read articles debunking his ideas, to simply blindly accept his point of view as being the definitive is foolish.

Kasmos

Any other articles on this? I mean... an article off a site that has numerous ads doesn't seen quite reliable in my opinion.

But, if what this scientist has said is true, and the countless others that disagree are wrong, then maybe we shouldn't do anything about greenhouse gases.

Again, as always, human beings will not do anything to prevent a problem, until the problem effects them. I still don't understand why, just to be on the safe side, we do not take action with this current situation. In the LONG RUN, our economies would benefit from it and we would stop using so much oil (thus preventing the need for pointless wars...)

My two cents.

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danarhea

Good old Augie Auer of the New Zealand Met Service. How do debunk him? Quite easily. Start at the beginning. Read the article, which is quite politicized in the tradition of the Fox Noise Channel here in the US (by this time, a red light should be going off in the head of any reasonable person), then go over each of the following points:

1) First of all, what is the New Zealand Meteorological Service? Although originally a government-owned enterprise, it is now a service for its media, aviation, and energy company businesses - Whats the word? Yea, a shill. Says so right on their web site.

2) What about Augie Auer himself? Used to be a weatherman on TV3 in New Zealand until he was fired. Went on to become the head of guess where? Yup, the New Zealand Met Service (See point number 1). Regarded as a crackpot by the mainstream scientific community.

3) As for Augie Auer's science? Smoke and mirrors, omitting information that would disprove his theory if he used it, and easily debunked, right here.

4) What about the science of global warming itself? The most respected scientific organization in the world on the subject is the Woodshole Oceanographic Institute. Here is their section on global warming and here is their section on abrupt climate change. Let me add that these are real scientists, not former weathermen who got fired and went on to head organizations run for the benefit of energy companies.

5) Here are some videos of lectures (made by real scientists from all over the world, not former weathermen who got fired and went on to head organizations run for the benefit of energy companies) from the University of Washington's Research Channel:

A Changing Landscape: Investigating a Warming Arctic

A Warmer Pacific Northwest: Lessons from the Past


Effect of Global Climate Change on Northwest Forests, Part 1


Effect of Global Climate Change on Northwest Forests, Part 2


Forests Aflame: Strategies and Challenges for Managing Fire in the West


Investigating a Warming Arctic: A Conversation (long)


North Pole Environmental Observatory


Policy and Ethics in Science and Engineering


Research Frontiers - Hatfield Marine Science Center


Science and Society: The Role of the Research University


Sea of Microbes


Spin Cycle: How the Media Portrays Climate Change


Storytelling in Science: Honesty, Imagination and Ethics


The Changing Arctic


The Ends of the World: Astrobiology and Armageddon


The Hurricane-Climate Connection


The Science of Global Warming


Whatever Happened to Ethics and Civility? (110)

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Jack Kevorkian for President's Physician: 2012

Karmashock

There are other sources that will confirm the information here. As to your statement that sites with ads aren't credible... that would mean the Wallstreet Journal, New York Times, London Times, and Le Monde aren't credible. Frankly, it's a silly statement because most newspapers in the world have ads. It is how they fund themselves primarily.

however, I would say that the opinions in the article are nothing more then opinions... and the article is doing little more then reporting what someone said.

If greenhouse gases aren't a problem then you don't need to worry about them.

that does not however relate to toxic cases that many countries emit.

I think you're oversimplifying complex issues to the point where they've confused you.

The only war I know of that was about Oil was Saddam's war against Kuwait. You can claim the US war against Saddam was about oil, but you'll just be parroting a political slogan with no real truth behind it.


that said, there are a lot of degenerate countries that are allowed to get rich off of their oil deposits... and hte world would probably be a better place if they didn't have that money. However, it should be noted that we don't have a viable alternative to oil at this point.


Solar and wind power won't power cars, trucks, ships, trains, or planes. Chemical batteries are expensive, don't hold enough power, discharge too slowly, are too heavy/bulky, and are EXTREMELY TOXIC when disposed of. In fact, hybrid cars are WORSE for the environment then typical cars are... If you actually examine the situation there's no way you can say otherwise.

Hydrogen powered cars suffer from much the same problems that hybrids suffer from only worse... they have LESS power because hydrogen engines output much less power at a slower rate then do combustion engines. They're also very heavy and bulky.

Biofuels while a nice way to recycle aren't really any better for the environment then anything else no matter how you look at it. And what's more there isn't enough bio fuel to power any economy or transit network unless it was specifically cultivated to be biofuel... which means you're not recycling any more. When you take into consideration the tractors, the water, the pesticides, etc etc of a cultivated biofuel system it's not very good for the environment either.



I can go on and on... but the point is that this tech isn't up to the problem. Neither can you say 'we need to cut back'... cutting back means you get paid less. It means you have less money... it means the government has less money (if you're a socialist, then that might mean something to you)... in poorer countries it will mean that people will starve or die because they can't afford medicine. It also means there will be less money for investment and research... It will be bad all round.



The one tech that looks promising to me is nano capacitors. A capacitor is vessel for storing an electric charge between two plates that are insulated from each other. Capacitors are great for a few reasons. One they can charge and discharge almost instantly their entire power load. The current problem with electric engines in cars is not that electric engines are weak but that the batteries can't feed power to them fast enough to get respectable acceleration. This also means that unlike batteries which take HOURS to charge because they store power chemically, a capacitor could charge basically as fast as the station can feed power to it. So you could charge your capacitor up in a couple minutes or perhaps a few seconds depending on how fast they wanted to feed power to your capacitor. The primary reason you'd want to slow that down a bit is to prevent dangerous arching or magnetic fields. You could be dealing with power line level charges plugged directly into your car.

The limitation of capacitors has always been their capacity... that is how "much" they could store which was generally pretty low. The limitation of storage however is based upon the surface area of the capacitor. Much like the human lung's ability to absorb is based upon it's internal surface area. The human lung has a LOT of surface area... I think it's something like 40 square meters or something like that... which it accomplishes by having a mesh of highly articulated fibrous tissue that is designed to expose as much blood as possible to the air at any given point. The Human lung is articulated down to the microscopic level... Likewise, a nano capacitor is articulated down to the microscopic level. That allows for greatly increased capacity. In fact, such capacitors already have greater capacity then our finest chemical batteries.


Taken all together you get a device that can store more power then a battery, discharge/recharge almost instantly, won't wear out from use, and probably won't be especially toxic... it will be made out of metals and metals are never very environmentally friendly... but they won't be in the highly reactive and corrosive types that batteries must have...


There are some other techs out there that are also interesting... one of htem is a compressed air system that I think the french are selling to the Indians... hte idea being that the car runs on compressed air... that would probably be fine for most cars especially in a city... but that won't work for trucks, trains, boats, or planes.


Ultimately planes are going to have to run on bio fuel if they can't get petroleum. But I don't think that's going to be a problem for several hundred years at least. Ships might be able to run on massive nano capacitors stored in their hulls as the energy density is comparable to fuel... The same can be said of trains and trucks.

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The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant: It's just that they know so much that isn't so. -- Ronald Reagan
Ignore list: Volker, niftydrifty, PeteEU

PeteEU

You bloody liberal commie treehugger terrorist loving jew hating muslim lover Danarhea.. how dare you expose a "hero" of the right?

btw did I miss any of the usual right wing slurs?

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PeteEU

Karmashock

Sure... you forgot, Neo-Luddite twit.

Tashah

Moderator's Warning:

Thread moved. All threads pertaining to Global Warming must reside in the E&CI forum.

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meeps

“Again, as always, human beings will not do anything to prevent a problem, until the problem effects them. I still don't understand why, just to be on the safe side, we do not take action with this current situation. In the LONG RUN, our economies would benefit from it and we would stop using so much oil (thus preventing the need for pointless wars...)”

Paradox?

As I understand it, the current policy of the Bush Administration is to take preemptive action to stop terrorism before it affects us… (Perhaps just to be on the safe side?)
This policy is remains open for debate…

Seems to me humans are taking action in this matter. The search for alternative fuel sources continues, the general public is becoming more and more enlightened as it relates to our impact on the planet and governments are beginning to enact policy as it relates. So, who is not taking action? Just because a person chooses to use multiple sheets upon completion of a relief transaction does not make them less aware of global issues.

This issue is worth debate…sound reasonable debate, not hysterical banter packed with veiled attacks upon entities of whom we don’t care for.

SouthernDemocrat

Boy, all those scientists at the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Society, the IPCC, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and virtually every major scientific society in the modern world with expertise in Climate sure are stupid.

The problem is that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere at approximately 50 times the natural rate. Moreover, there is a direct correlation between increased economic activity since the industrial era, carbon emissions, and increased global temperatures.

Image:Instrumental Temperature Record.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image:Carbon Dioxide 400kyr-2.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image:Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am always astounded when people think that something occurred to them or some two bit meteorologist on a little island, that has not occurred to the vast, vast, majority of scientists who have studied this issue, including the most well respected scientific societies on earth

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Charles Krauthammer describing Obama:

"He's got both a first-class intellect and a first-class temperament."

Karmashock

the link between human activity and global warming has not been made. What's more there is a great deal of evidence to back up that we're going through a natural shift that is largely ignored.


As to your temperature graphs, those are extremely complicated system they're attempting to model with a single variable. Many scientists don't think such things are valid especially as you go back in time and the means by which you cite the global temperature of thousands of years ago becomes increasingly suspect.

Especially such things are questionable when you consider that we've seen much more melting in the past then we have seen so far... and yet at the same time these "global" temperature models say the world was colder at a time when there was more melting.


It's not consistent. I don't blame it for being inconsistent, it's a very difficult thing to model.