The Great Global Warming Swindle

[teraflop122]

Here you see tempurature changes in Antarctica over the past 350,000 years. As you can see the tempurature Naturally varies by over twenty degrees. Its strange to note that CO2 levels have skyrocketed for obvious reasons, but peak tempuraters are Lower than they have been during other hot periods in prehistory.

people living in the same place for thousands of years & then suddenly being forced out of their homes by flood doesn't seem like a natural accourance

If you think that's crazy you should read about Krakatoa, a volcano (and island) whose eruption in 535AD caused abrupt climate changes throughout the following year. The 1883 eruption created the loudest sound ever recorded; it was easily heard 3000 miles away. 165 villages and towns were completely destroyed, 132 more were damaged, the death toll was something like 32000, along with the entire island of Krakatoa which was completely destroyed in the explosion. Tsunamis also radiated outwards from the blast. Every few hundred years the volcano erupts causing massive damage and blotting out the sun with ash, sometimes for extended periods of time. However, we do not blame the eruptions on anyone just because they rarely occur: neither can we blame anyone for a flood of a magnitude rarely seen.

I'm done talking now.

[jones]

Eh, people living in the same place for thousands of years & then suddenly being forced out of their homes by flood doesn't seem like a natural accourance to me.

really? last i heard flooding was pretty much a natural occurance. yes some of the icecaps are melting, but in other places around the world (greenland and others i belive, not 100% positive) the thickness of the ice shelf has INCREASED by several feet over the last century or 2? global warming IS happening but its a natural cyclical thing that occurs throughout the centruies. i dont think we should worry about it but other types of pollution should be out main concern, toxic chemicals, radioactive waste all that garbage is horrible for the environment! worry about that crap not global warming

Unfortunately you're dead wrong on Greenland. It is actually melting at an alarming rate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01557.html

The permafrost in Alaska and Siberia is melting for the first time in recorded history. Permafrost contains large amounts of CO2. When it melts this CO2 gets released into the atmosphere.

I'm not going to get into this too deep, because it will unfortunately descend into a political pissing match.

All I will say is that I have lived in Wisconsin my whole life (almost 30 years now) and there have been dramatic changes in the climate in the last 10 years. It's really quite sad.

Global warming exists. We can agree to disagree on what the cause of global warming is (nature, man, or a combination of the two). The simple fact of the matter is that we need to get to work on coming up with a solution. Even if man didn't cause it (which is unlikely as man can never be completely innocent of anything ) we can still reduce our impact on the problem. Whether it be electric cars, solar shingles, windmills, etc. there are many ways we can do better.

I think we can all agree that improvements can and will be made. It seems like Americans need to be slapped in the face before they act on an issue. It appears that we are reaching that point on global warming. How we respond is entirely up to us.

[ATOMICMAN]

there are other factors never taken in account. like the sun itself, it does not have a constant temp. other planets and bodies are having a period of warming also. solar flares can cause spikes in temp here on earth. another factor to include is the orbit of the earth while it is pretty stable, it is not entirely static, we do move closer and further away from the sun in cycles.

we may have an affect on the climate but it would be like a drop in the ocean compared to the other natural forces at work. but i dont say we can pollute all we want. localized smog is a health hazard and conservation of energy helps reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. i think some concern on our pollution is important but were it starts to dip deep into the pockets of people and start to constrict trade and commerce it will do more harm then good.

[Rekarp]

windmills

Using Windmills to generate electricity could (if we used a large number of them) effect global wind patterns but it should lower the temperature of the earth in an indirect way.

The permafrost in Alaska and Siberia is melting for the first time in recorded history.

Recorded History exactly.


Btw neat site jones.

[jones]

windmills

Using Windmills to generate electricity could (if we used a large number of them) effect global wind patterns but it should lower the temperature of the earth in an indirect way.

If they were used en masse that could be a possibility. If used in conjunction with other methods though it would seem that their impact would be minimal. I am by no means an expert on the subject so I can only speculate.

I noticed you didn't comment on the solar shingles though.

The permafrost in Alaska and Siberia is melting for the first time in recorded history.

.

Recorded History exactly.

I realize this is a limitation and results in semi-inconclusive data. Unfortunately that's all we have to go on as far as that is concerned I guess. Perhaps they have been able to do some coring with this as well to look at it over hundreds of thousands of years, but I can't say for certain.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to watch the video at the beginning of this post (I'm at work at the moment), but I'm sure it will be interesting. I'm sure it will have a lot of the same opposition I have heard and seen in the past.

I think everyone should look at both sides of the debate, as well as their own personal experiences before coming to judgment though.

Btw neat site jones.

Thanks! I don't get much time to work on it anymore unfortunately. Ben's going to help me out with converting it to Wordpress one of these days, so that should be amusing if nothing else. That way Dale can add stuff to the site without having to wait for me to post it which will help a lot.

Enjoying the discussion!

[benheck]

I personally believe in global tilting, that eventually the Earth's rotation will skew and flip the seasons. We're already seeing evidence of that in Wisconsin, our winters take place in February-April. Call me nuts, but in 3 million years I could be right. (It won't take nearly that long to expose the Wii as a POS)

Of the most importance is the political aspect, developing nations and money. Already we have 2 former 3rd world countries that are rapidly industrializing, increasing the demand for oil / energy and creating more pollution. America is one thing, when a billion people stop riding bikes and start buying cars, that's another.

A lot of the "save the planet" stuff comes from the West. We do indeed have the luxury of trying to limit the expansion of these current technologies because we already have them. "Stop wasting energy!" we type on our computers, with the heat up the 70, with lights on in the other room. That's a good example of why it's an Inconvient Truth, because it's not convienent to not pollute.

Personally I don't think electric cars will make the problem go away. Most eletricity is still produced by coal, and even if cars ran off hydrogen it takes a lot of eletricity to extract it from water.

Also if (when) we get off oil, something else will shoot up and drain our wallets just as much as 2.50/gallon. If E85 gets used mainstream (gas made from 85 ethynol) then food will skyrocket (since they'll be a corn shortage) and we'll become dependent on Brazil.

Why Brazil? Well they're not just cutting down the rainforest to piss off Captain Planet but to create farmland. When we push our corn usage to the limit, you can bet your farm we'll be importing from them. Then it's be "Get us off foriegn Corn!"

They need to get crackin' on Tesla Zero Point Energy machines or - gasp - NUCLEAR power. You realize a nuclear sub runs for 25 years on a lump of plutonium the size of your fist? And the waste water is actually less radioactive than beer? When we have a REAL energy crisis in about 25 years we'll be kicking ourselves for becoming nuclear pussies after Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island.

[Jongamer]

Omg I unerstand people can beleave in whatever they want, but global warming is nothing but a Pile of Shi*

Hey do you know why the Planet is warming up? We are coming out of a screwing Iceage, the planet has gone in and out of Ice ages since it began.

People there is no such thing as Global Warming, well there is but Not from Pollution and crap like that, Like I said, WE ARE COMING OUT OF AN ICE AGE!!!!

If you want to beleave these Collage Professors and Scientist who want to keep their jobs, they needed to come up with something new to keep their jobs, so they came up with Global warming.

I'll say it again, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING.

Hell Half the United States used to be Underwater, know why? there wasnt an Ice age then!

I'm Done

Accually no I'm not.
There is no way we are gonna stop the Heating of the Earth, its Natural, if we all die, whos cares we wont be around to know.

now Asteroids, Polarity shift, nearby Stars (not the Sun) going Super Nova and Wiping out our Atmosphere and Literally Frying us with Radiation, Building Computers that can Emulate Human Thought and Hooking that up to the Nukes and then they will turn on us, Those are all the Real dangers.

If anyone watched The Last Days on Earth on the History Channel, Which number one Global Warming *Raspberry* made the show IMO fall to the Ground, but Steven Hawking Predicts that in the Next 10 year Computers Will Surpass humans ability to think and Emulate or Surpass human thought.

And Asteroids, there is supposed to be a Asteroid that is Supposed to fly so close to the Earth, that it will fly Under our Sattellites on April, 13 2029, and then 7 years later on the same day, its supposed to return and there is a 1 in a thousand chance of hitting the earth causeing pretty much what happened years ago that Killed the Dinasaurs.

and another Thing that could kill us, and once before Lowered the human race to mere Hundreds a couple hundreds of thousands of Years ago, Yellowstone National Park Super Volcano, we are Overdue for a Super Volcano Eruption by around 50,000 years.

Ok NOW I'm done.

[Rekarp]

sry jones I was in a bit of a rush to make it to my first class. Solar panals have the problem that it takes more energy to make a solar cell then what it will produce in there lifetime. So intill they can perfect the method in making solar cells then there not really an option.

Thermal Heat is a good option tho. There is an experimental Power Station out West (Nevada?) that uses Mirrors to deflect the suns rays into a central area that contains a liquid that is heated up to turn a turbine/generator. Solar thermal Energy. Problem with Solar/thermal power is that you can only generate it during the day so you would need a way to store the energy.

Personally I don't think electric cars will make the problem go away. Most eletricity is still produced by coal, and even if cars ran off hydrogen it takes a lot of eletricity to extract it from water.

Also if (when) we get off oil, something else will shoot up and drain our wallets just as much as 2.50/gallon. If E85 gets used mainstream (gas made from 85 ethynol) then food will skyrocket (since they'll be a corn shortage) and we'll become dependent on Brazil.

Finally someone understands!! Even tho Hydrogen is a clean fuel you still need to produce it and you need energy to do so (a lot of energy mind you).

Ethanol is such a bad Idea and is not the path the energy market should go. Its not an efficient process to turn corn into it (you have to turn it into sugar first) and it lowers (yes lowers) you mpg. To make enough ethanol to run the cars we have now you would need a land mass of 3 times the USA (i think it was 3 times..maybe 2?) and then you would have to worry about depleting the soil.

Agreed on the Nuclear power Ben. Theres a Nuclear Power Station about 50 or so miles south of Houston and I'm not turning green and smashing buildings yet.

Once oil becomes uneconomical to produce (we will never run out of oil, it will just one day become to expensive for consumers to buy) I betcha we will move to a biofuel much like diesel. It burns clean and you can recycle any organic material into it (its like making oil in an accelerated process). Or a kind of synthetic gasoline (hey they can make synthetic rubber so why not?) to power our cars.

Thanks! I don't get much time to work on it anymore unfortunately. Ben's going to help me out with converting it to Wordpress one of these days, so that should be amusing if nothing else. That way Dale can add stuff to the site without having to wait for me to post it which will help a lot.

Wordpress is awsome!! I created my site with it as well. Problem is that It is still wordpress 1.5? and I havent bothered to upgrade.

Enjoying the discussion! Very Happy

Me to its nice when people are rational about issues like this. (so far atleast) I have to argue about energy and stuff on a weekly basis and you won't believe the closed mindedness of the so called "open" minded people.

I may be a petroleum engineer but I do agree that we need to start switching to alternative fuels but right now oil is the cheapest form of energy (even at what $70/bl?). The good thing is that even if we did switch to another fuel we would still need oil for plastics and lubricants so I wouldn't be out of a job


Edit// I wanted to add a little tid bit to here. Most people and Media dont realize how much oil is actually left. When you recover oil you can only get roughly %15 of it out of ground (there are some rare exceptions like the East Texas field that has an estimated 80% recovery rate). So we have a lot of oil that we know where it is but we currently do not have the technology to get it out or its to expensive to retrieve it.

[teraflop122]

I can't stand it when scientists say "We are overdue for xyz disaster." They say that about everything!

I already did my part to use energy more efficiently: The bedrooms in my house are lit by fans with 5 bulbs. So basically each room is(was) blasted by 300 watts of incadescent light and heat. We have since replaced all those with the newer CCFL bulbs, which are only 13~15 watts. Now our lighting fictures only draw...65 watts or so? Thats five bulbs of brightness for the energy cost of one incadescent lamp! They aren't all that expensive nowadays either.

Power plants are more efficient than the engines in your car, so electric cars do cut back quite a bit on pollution. We could fix that altogether by investing more in nuclear power and renewable sources.

I think we'll also start to see electric cars charged via small solar panels. No, the panel won't make enough juice to actively power the car, but it'll recharge the batteries while the car sits in the parking lot for hours on end while you work.

EDIT:

You know what? To Hell with cars all together!

Everyone should watch "The End of Suburbia" right now. Sure, it stinks of doomsaying and holplessness, but it containst some very interesting facts. Cars are not to blame- our suburban living arrangements are at fault. I tend to agree that we need to start living in "walkable," diverse neighborhoods- not thirty minutes from our workplace.

[Triton]

gah i knew i was wrong about greenland but there are places around the world where ice thickness has been increasing. its pretty clear that people are horrible on the environment in pretty much every way you can think of but global warming shouldnt be the huge issue they made it up to be. in all honesty the reason gas prices are what they are is because of oil company profiteering. did you know that recently exxon mobile relased a statement that they had earned the second highest profit (thats profit not earnings before tax etc) of any company on earth EVER in one quarter, they earned over TEN BILLION dollars straight profit, around 100billion in revenue and the number one comapny is, shocker right here, EXXON MOBILE! 10.7 billion dollars in PROFIT in ONE QUARTER (again with the emphasis) and they say they arent profiteering and price gouging

[timmeh87]

jongamer: before you decide to jump on one bandwagon or another, perhaps you should at leas read the wiki article on ice ages, then look at a graph of the temperature over the last 1000 years. oh, here it is.

http://www.ipcc.ch/present/graphics/200 ... /05.24.jpg

so compare that with the graph that terraflop showed earlier. As you can see, the low spots on his graph correspond to ice ages. That little bit at the end of the last ice age represents about 10,000 years, which is roughly the time since the last ice age. since then the temperature has been roughly constant. (+- .25 deg C)

Or until 1900. (see graph above). If having seen the data, you still honestly believe that that massive 1/2 degree (up to 5 degrees projected) temperature spike (that coincidentally happened at the same time as the industrial age) is us "coming out of an ice age" then (censored).

To everyone else: Im pretty disappointed in you guys. It really sounds like a lot of you dont actually understand much about what is going on.


one last comment: if you examine terraflops graph once again, you will see that the pattern actually suggests that we are about to go INTO another ice age.

[teraflop122]

the pattern actually suggests that we are about to go INTO another ice age.

And they called me crazy for stocking up on lard and jackets! One might wonder whether our industrial greenhouse gases will take the edge off the coming transition

[Sir Games-A-Lot]

I watched the first few minutes and was bored. how did they get a video that big on youtube?

This statement should be archived under "Classic Geek"

I tend to agree that we need to start living in "walkable," diverse neighborhoods- not thirty minutes from our workplace.

I'm with you all the way on this one, but my opinion is somewhat tainted due to the fact that I could easily be qualified as a "Menace To Humanity" when trying to drive over 15-20 MPH

[Rekarp]

TEN BILLION dollars straight profit

Do you realize how much it costs to put an offshore rig in? 1-2 Billion dollars just to build the dam thing. Thats not including laying pipe or filling stations for tankers. Operating costs are up to $100,000+ a day while drilling. So if Exxon Mobile decided to build a new platform it would cut a lot into there earnings/profit. All that means is that Exxon Mobile wasn't building any new infrastructure in the 1stQ. Remember Katrina/Rita? The Industry had to rebuild all the structures in LA and gulf area.

If you really want to argue against the oil prices talk to OPEC. lol

[limpport]

Hey do you know why the Planet is warming up? We are coming out of a screwing Iceage, the planet has gone in and out of Ice ages since it began.

People there is no such thing as Global Warming, well there is but Not from Pollution and crap like that, Like I said, WE ARE COMING OUT OF AN ICE AGE!!!!

If you look at the graph that teraflop posted, it shows that we were "coming out of an ice age" 15,000 years ago. And if you had actualy looked at it, we are at the peak before a new ice age.

How can you use a computer when you are obviously so blind?