Climate Change for Idiots
On September 11, 2001, our world changed forever.
And not just because of the obvious. For three days after the attack on the World Trade Center, all commercial aviation came to a standstill in the United States. For the first time since 1914, when Tony Jannus piloted a wooden, open-air Benoist XIV biplane in the first commercial passenger-carrying airline flight from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida, traffic in the friendly skies above the amber waves of grain came to a screeching halt. And in those three crucial days, our entire understanding of global warming underwent a fundamental transformation.
But this literally earth-shattering revelation has not been getting a lot of press since that horrible day. Public interest in climate change is dwindling into either resigned apathy, or growing skepticism about the risks of global warming; a 14 percent decline in people who believe the earth is becoming warmer. At the current conference in Copenhagen, the emphasis has shifted away from what the hell are we going to do to save the planet before it’s too late to world leaders bickering and squabbling in an unseemly power struggle over who gets to pollute the most. And while the talks are failing as politicians shuffle carbon credits around like magicians with a deck of cards, global warming deniers are busily promulgating ever more heated and bizarre conspiracy theories.
Climate change is a hoax, they’re shouting from their soap boxes. Agenda 21 is just a smoke screen designed to enslave the Third World, and global warming is fraud, a steekin’ fraud, I tells ya, run by the Illuminati and the Rothschild dynasty and aliens from Alpha Centuri in a vast conspiracy with Big Business and Pharma and corrupt politicians to control the world’s resources in a scam for world domination! Global warming is a natural phenomenon, they’re insisting, 30,000 scientists have iron-clad proof (and leaked emails) that it’s all been propaganda designed to frighten us. CO2 is caused by tectonic plate shift, or the earth’s axis tilting, or sun spots, or Urban Heat Island effects, or water vapor, or cows farting. (Actually, the last one does have some validity; livestock ‘byproducts’ account for 32.6 billion tons of CO2 per year, or 51% of annual global GHG emissions.) It’s a natural cycle – we went through a Little Ice Age in the Holocene then global warming in the Middle Ages (actually, we didn’t), and volcanoes spew out more CO2 than humans do (again, uh-uh, human activity releases more than 130 times more CO2 than all our current active volcanoes combined). Anyway, modeling the environment is too vast, too vague, too complicated, not even scientists can agree with one another; we just aren’t capable of adequately simulating the atmosphere or understanding climate change.
Besides, why should we care how much we pollute the planet, since India and China don’t give a damn…?
So… a bit of Climate Change for Idiots to aid those of us who feel like we’re beating heads against the wall arguing with friends and relatives frantically denying The End is Nigh, all while driving their SUVs through the nearest McDonald’s drive-in, those poor benighted souls too obtuse to realize the causes of global warming are myriad, and that while – yes, they are correct, Big Biz and First World greed are busily maneuvering and dodging and scheming over who gets to profit the most from climate change – that doesn’t mean it’s not real. We’re too focused on the looters to realize that the city is burning down around us.
Climate change is complicated, but not impossible to understand. Anyone with a driver’s license for that SUV isn’t required to know that d = V /(2g(f + G)) ; drivers instinctively know enough physics to apply the brakes long before the car needs to stop. The reaction time for a driver to start applying the brakes is 1.5 seconds. In terms of climate change, we’re in that reaction phase – and we’d better start thinking about stomping on the brakes pretty damned soon. A driver who doesn’t care about braking before they crash is either stupid, suicidal, or crazy.
Let’s break this down into more easily digested morsels so that even those suffering from the current deficit of basic science in American school systems that their grasp of geological history is closer to The Flintstones than Charles Darwin can get a grip.
Dick and Jane are in a jet, flying over Kansas. Look, Jane, look! The jet is leaving a contrail behind us. See the contrail form cirrus clouds. Contrails last up to eight hours, says Jane, and only half a dozen of them are needed to grow and form a cloud the size of the entire state of Massachusetts. That’s really big, says Dick. Woof, says Spot, shivering down in the baggage hold.
Now for some basic math, something else that seems to be lacking in our classrooms these days:
Five thousand planes, give or take a few, are in flight over the United States at any given moment. In a single day, more than 87,000 are leaving contrails all over those friendly skies. On average, 64 million jet planes take off and land somewhere in the States, leaving behind contrails. Divide six cirrus clouds the size of Massachusetts into 64 million contrails, and that’s a lot of clouds. All this cloud cover is bouncing the sun’s energy back into space, keeping our planet cool in what’s been called ‘global dimming,’ which should be a good thing, right?
Um, not really. Now we need some chemistry… yeah, yeah, I know. They don’t teach much of that in schools anymore, either. But let’s give it a shot, anyway.
What exactly are contrails? Contrails and clouds are similar, made up of condensed water vapour freezing around small particles. Clouds form from ice crystals and other natural particles, like dust blown into the atmosphere by wind. Ice crystals melt into water, while dust, being generally inert, falls back to earth where it came from. Contrails, on the other hand, form around aircraft exhaust, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, and hydrocarbons such as methane, sulfates, soot and metal particles. The clouds formed by these exhaust particulates has another difference to ordinary clouds; ice crystals and natural dust is larger than hydrocarbon particulates, which form much smaller water droplets. Smaller water droplets reflect back more sunlight, but don’t grow heavy enough to precipitate as rain. Pollution-derived clouds actually decrease rain, adding to drought conditions.
Now add this in to what is known as the Asian Brown Cloud, a thick layer of smog covering a huge area of southern Asia and the Indian Ocean formed by combustion pollution, wood fires, garbage fires, burning fossil fuels in cars, industrial factory emissions, the usual culprits. In the monsoon months, rain washes this massive toxic cloud out of the air – and into the soil. But while this lethal crap is floating around in the atmosphere and causing droughts, floods, and killing two million people a year, it also is contributing to ‘global dimming’, masking its own impact on atmospheric warming. And before anyone gets too smug that the so-called ‘Asian’ Brown Cloud is all India and China’s fault and therefore their problem, it’s not unique to Asia; hotspots popping up in Europe, South Africa, South America, and North America – in other words, everywhere.
In September of 2001, we got our first real glimpse of what happens if we aren’t pumping vast quantities of particulate crap into the air alongside all the carbon dioxide waste. Current climate change forecasts only take into consideration CO2 emissions, which predict a maximum warming of 5 degrees by the end of the century, plenty of time to ‘do something’, everyone can relax, sit back, wait for scientists and politicians to come up with the answers all in the nick of time, don’t worry, be happy.
But climate change forecasts haven’t been factoring in global dimming. We don’t have a hundred years to come up with a solution – we’ve got about twenty to apply those brakes before it’s too late. Cooling particle pollution is already dropping off while the CO2 warming pollution is continuing to rise, which means a doubled accelerated warming - reducing cooling and increased heating at the same time. With the dual effect of global warming/global dimming, temperatures could rise twice as fast as previously thought, global warming exceeding two degrees by around 2030, at which point the Greenland ice sheet would melt, causing irreversible damage.
Once the Greenland ice cap begins to melt, nothing will stop it. After Greenland, the world's tropical rain forests will start to die off in the heat. By 2040, with only a four degree rise in global temperature, the Amazon Basin rain forest becomes unsustainable, subjected to devastating fires (think - Australia right now), all of South America turns into one vast savannah and ultimately desert.
As rain forests die and burn, those fires will release even more CO2 into the atmosphere, driving global warming still further and faster. In just a century, rather than five degrees hotter, the world could easily be twice that, which would be a warming more rapid than any other at any time ever in Earth’s history. Bar none.
Most European and northern plant species will not survive in a North African climate. But while a ten degree warming in Europe in a hundred years is merely catastrophic, a ten degree warming in an already hot country makes it completely uninhabitable. Life on earth begins to starve and die, which includes us.
And now for the coup de grace at the end of this chain of effect: a ten degree warming will lead to the release of a vast natural store of greenhouse gas bigger than all the oil and coal reserves of the planet. Methane hydrates store ten thousand billion tons of methane, a greenhouse gas eight times stronger than carbon dioxide, at the bottom of the ocean in a kind of frozen form, known to be destabilized by warming. Once these gasses start to be released, no matter what was done at that point to curb emissions, it would be too late. Ten thousand billion tons of methane, which would have twenty-five times the impact on temperature than a carbon dioxide emission of the same mass over the following 100 years, would be released into the atmosphere, the Earth's climate heading towards temperatures unseen in four billion years, with no way to stop it. All life on earth would become extinct. It’s the end of the world. And we're only talking two hundred years, tops.
But, yeah, those deniers are completely correct about one thing - the earth has been here before. Back when the only life capable of surviving in such an atmosphere and climate was precursors of bacteria. Totally natural, ya betcha. If we're really lucky, the earth will recover on its own, just like it did the first time around... in another four billion years.
Welcome to Venus, folks...
All of the lines end with a word that rhymes with "deny" or "lie," but nice try. It's unbelievable (so why do I believe it?) how many times I get shouted down for trying to refer the deniers to real websites with real data (it's a left-wing conspiracy to raise taxes and take My Hard Earned Money, don't cha know). If they don't want to know the truth, they're not going to look. So they just attack and tune in to Fakes News to get The Real Truth from Hanitty & O'Really. So frustrating.
"Trust no one, Mr. Mulder." - Well-Manicured Man
This is a reply to Nonny's reply @ 15:21. Vewwy vewwy stwange softy-wary things going on awound hewe.
"Trust no one, Mr. Mulder." - Well-Manicured Man
Frustrating is an argument that supports capping and trading carbon credits in an attempt to thwart global warming, while we continue to make more people faster than they die.
It makes no sense. More humans is the primary cause of a larger footprint. Babies cause the earth to warm! Cap and trade babies. http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2...
The Bin Laden families we're given clearance for takeoff . .
The Bin Ladens left the US on Sept 20, one week after the FAA allowed commercial air traffic to resume at 11am on Sept. 13.
http://www.factcheck.org/article294.html
Also, even if that were true, it's pertinent how?
It is pertinent because if we were serious about getting bin laden, the last people we should have let go and the first ones detained should have been his family. Whether or not he was estranged from the. We are fully willing to bomb a wedding to get a few Al Queda, totally willing to kill several families in bombing raids to get at "suspected" terrorists, but we cannot peacefully detain for forever the family of the guy we know was the terrorist who perpetrated the attacks?
I think the question is, how is it pertinent to climate change?
All the dust the bin ladens released from downing the world trade center contributed to global shading, thus helping the contrails.
There back on topic.
Evet is a known thread stealer.
Nova did a piece on this! TY Nonny!!! We love you!!
My first semester went great. Eng3090 "Intro to Criticism" was all As!
the stereotype skinny blond, racing down a neighborhood street (15 MPH Speed Limit) in her Yukon-Xtra Large, stupid grin, blabbing on cell fone, adjusting the make-up runs over a neighbors pet and keeps driving. Oblivous to anything but her bikini wax appointment.
is the blond male of female.
Yes
...it says so, right on the bottle...
Both my cuffs and collars match
Black patent leather and chrome.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
but maybe not tomorrow.
Everybody knows the earth is only 6,000 years old, and in, oh, a month or two, God will rapture us all (well, me and the Palins, anyway) up to Heaven, so who cares about the climate? Plus, liberals want to eat babies.
Sorry, just channeling a Republican there for a second.
Impressive.
is intended to be a factual statement
The sky is falling....the sky is falling. We will all boil. Al Gore is the smartest man on earth. The heat generated by me shovelling this snow is contributing to man made global warming...er climate change. Cow farts will kill us all.
Oops, sorry. Channeling there myself. LOL!
Oops, havin' a little trouble differentiating between weather and climate, huh?
It are snoeing thearfor globe are not warm!! LOL!!!
Thanks.
Corruption favors the wealthy.
notes.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
But I really was trying for the Reader's Digest version...
response to Mozart.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
LOL - don't mind being compared to Mozart, thanks. :)
played by Jeffrey Jones.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
That was still pretty nice of you. :)
Corruption favors the wealthy.
in foreign lands they weren't invited to, in a noble effort to introduce Freedom Fries and Television, DVD's and e-mail to the poor, impoverished, and starving masses.
First, the idea that there has never been a time since 1914 with no commercial airplanes in US air-space is utter nonsense. It's cute that you looked up the first scheduled commercial flight, but that's all it is ... cute.
Second, I have to ask if you read the piece that you linked to WRT the effect of pollutants in contrails. Yes, they can decrease precipitation, but they also increase the reflectivity of the clouds. In other words - since this thread seems to be for idiots - they help decrease global warming.
Your first quibble is as amusing as my 'cuteness'.
But for the second - contrails don't 'help' to decrease global warming. They're serving to mask it. And if you read the piece closely, any way you slice it, the effect of pollutant driven cloud formation is detrimental to weather patterns.
There's nothing 'good' about pollutant driven global dimming.
Cloud with smaller droplets reflect more sunlight. Many of the pollutants in contrails decrease droplet size. This is WHY they also inhibit rain.
Yes, the same pollutants have other, less-direct effects that may increase warming. Just as their less-direct effects may end up increasing precipitation. But if you're going to focus on near-immediate effects, such as decreased rain, then you need to also admit that another near-immediate effect is to reflect more sunlight.
It's not simple. But telling only half of the simple story won't fly, as it were. To mention the decrease in rain obligates you to mention the increase in reflectivity. If you want to counter my point by bringing up down-stream costs of increasing reflectivity by polluting the air, I'm all for this, but you'll then need to mention that the decrease in rainfall is also temporary.
Chill. Nonny's post includes all the things you said are left out. In other words, she was not telling "only half of the simple story."
Yes, it does include it now. My work is done.
huh?
I don't have any power to edit a piece once it's on the site. So if you're implying I've somehow gone back and added stuff... nope. What you see is what I wrote.
Maybe you just missed it first time around?
Did we read the same piece or is your reading comprehension suffering from willful ignorance?
True. But it is a very good argument towards prioritizing reductions in the consumption of natural gas and oil which produce less aerosols than coal. If you're willing to ignore the other environmental hazards associated with coal that is. Some of the odder proposals for dealing with warming include the injection of massive amounts of aerosols to sustain that global dimming while we get our house in order. Doesn't seem too workable to me.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
homeless vets huddle over steam grates on Chicago's Wacker Drive in sub freezing temps, while stockbrokers flip the bird from their Mercedes Benz's and yell "get a job bum!"
Sad, isn't it. I'm losing my faith in humanity.
Meanwhile, the ice is melting, polar bears are drowning and the temperature today in Iqaluit, Nunavut is +2C.
This planet is screwed.
I don't know about us though.
it's looking pretty bad.
we're going to end up another one of those mystery's of lost civilizations story's. Poisoned and polluted to death by their own greed.
Another way to look at it is that we'll end up in the list of 98% of all species that ever lived that have now gone extinct. Our biggest threat is the group of humans who think we are somehow 'special' and exempt from the processes of nature due to some kind of magical divine protection.
Now that's balmy for this time of year. I wonder if the golf courses are still open? Mind you they consist entirely of sand and gravel traps but some like the challenge.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
Fri, 12/18/2009 - 14:28 — calgarylady
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvEzTixaqpc
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Thanks, ysb!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFlKx3YPL5I
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I love it!
Any catch James Inhofe speech at Copenhagen Claiming it was a farce? No? You're not alone then. No one showed up. An aid had to rustle up a couple of reporters. That's all it was, Inhofe one of his aids and three reporters. I'm being serious. And one of the reporters (a German) called him "ridiculous". Way to let the rest of the world see how stupid half this country is Inhofe.
is intended to be a factual statement
Believe me. It's no secret that half the country is barely above a third-grade reading level, with no comparable understanding of science. We've been a laughing stock for quite some time now.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
That the reason planets are warming is due to a re-intruding large body, "Planet X," or Nibiru, into our contemporary solar-system model.
Magnetic fields interacting cause core heating and tectonic effects.
I hadn't heard that one, I'll add it to the Silly List.
I wish the deniers were right - I wish it with all my heart that climate change isn't happening, that the planet isn't dying, that people aren't killing it with apathy and ignorance and greed.
But I'd rather do everything possible to ensure that they're right, than wait until it's too late just to say 'I told you so...'
We got twenty years, folks. That's it, that's the deadline, literally - if we don't pull our fingers out, the end will begin in our own lifetimes. We may not live long enough to see the death of our planet, but our grandchildren just might. Hell of a legacy to leave behind...
Maybe someone can demonstrate how it is wrong? For more fun!
Related -- http://www.enterprisemission.com/warming.htm
dystopian future is slightly less bleak than yours nonny. Even the Easter Islander's managed to preserve a minimalist existence after they trashed the ecology of their home. Our ability to degrade the planet will be alleviated by the degradation of industrial society. My love of Chinese cuisine will probably then be limited to a particular type of soylent green (made with real Chinese). I'm not looking forward to it. BTW if you're collecting bizarre theories forget about meteorites ending the cretaceous. It was dinosaur farts. Giant dinosaur farts.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
may not have trashed their own island. Seems current theories hold that it's more a case of Europeans showing up and saying 'we'll pay you with this shiny but worthless carbon credits so's we can rape and plunder and pillage and give you smallpox and rats.'
http://www.livescience.com/history/060309_eas...
But there's other populations, such as the Anasazi, who reached the limits of what their civilization could sustain, it collapsed, and they simply... moved on.
This time, it isn't just an island, or a region in the desert - it's the whole planet. We don't have anywhere else to 'move on' to...
there's always Nibiru.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
= the culling?
with laser beams and insatiable appetites, forcing the Easter Islanders to build senseless totems and devolve into cannibalism. It makes perfect sense now!
Europeans are eviler than I once estimated. And if our rodent modification technologies are confirmed, smarter too...
It's already too late. Cousteau warned it was too late just before he died. He was on more intimate terms with the ocean than just about anyone, and he saw it was dying back then. No matter what we do now, we've lost the earth as it has been over the last million years. Even if we stopped TODAY, the planet we have will not be the same, because it'll take time for the effects to fade off. We've already screwed the pooch.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Pollution of the planet from fossil fuel usage has to be stopped because of what it does to the air and water. But we are not contributing to the warming or cooling of the earth anywhere substantial enough to be able to affect its change either way by stopping the use of oil and gas.
And even if we did stop all of it, it would be 20 years before we changed the temperature one degree celcius.
Invest in alternative energies to stop damaging the water and air and land by windfall taxing the abusers. Not by trading carbon. Just rediculousness.
by republicans talking, it’s that simple!
And if we just shoot a rocket carrying a few engineers into the earth's core, they can stop the spinning thingie and put everything right in a matter of hours. Then the magnetic doohickie won't interact flamiferously with the temperature control whatsis, and we can all go back to driving our SUVs until Jesus shows up.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
some of the models for the Permian-Triassic Extinction, about 251 million years ago. Theories have included a comet or asteroid impact - although direct evidence has not been found, flood volcanism from the Siberian Traps and related loss of oxygen in the seas, an impact the impact triggered the volcanism (and also may have done so during the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction). An emerging theory is that greenhouse gases both raised the temperatures and acidified the seas, destroying the terrestrial and aquatic food chains. The Permian-Triassic catastrophe was Earths worst mass extinction, killing 95 percent of all species, 53 percent of marine families, 84 percent of marine genera and an estimated 70 percent of land species such as plants, insects and vertebrate animals.
The thing about change and rates of change, is that is goes unnoticed, unless you are carefully observing all indicators of change. There is a point, the inflection point, on the curve of change that usually preceeds the first generally noticeable uptick in the curve. By the time the uptick is noticed, it's already too late to prevent change from acquiring exponential rates of increase. If the curve that Al Gore used is an example, where we are already in the exponential rate of change portion of the curve, the inflection point would like have been in the late 1800's. The only thing could do in that case is try to have some small impact on where the vertical part of the curve begins to level out. The longer that is put off, the less likely it is that anything that is done will be of much effect. Events proceed to catastrophes in mathmatical terms and extinction event in the world about us. The changes in the world could well return us to the state when oxygen producing organisms first arrived on the scene. Not good for all air breathers.
for our own demise.
They even want to whack those of us who have been "green" (minimal consumers) for the past half century.
"What exactly are contrails? Contrails and clouds are similar, made up of condensed water vapour freezing around small particles. Clouds form from ice crystals and other natural particles, like dust blown into the atmosphere by wind. Ice crystals melt into water, while dust, being generally inert, falls back to earth where it came from. Contrails, on the other hand, form around aircraft exhaust, including carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides, and hydrocarbons such as methane, sulfates, soot and metal particles. The clouds formed by these exhaust particulates has another difference to ordinary clouds; ice crystals and natural dust is larger than hydrocarbon particulates, which form much smaller water droplets. Smaller water droplets reflect back more sunlight, but don’t grow heavy enough to precipitate as rain. Pollution-derived clouds actually decrease rain, adding to drought conditions. "
I'm sorry, you do yourself a huge disservice by making things up about how the atmosphere works. Once a water droplet starts to form, the particulate it formed on rapidly becomes irrelevant as long as the droplet gets past a critical size. The clouds you're talking about are far too high to become rainclouds, which form from convection in the atmosphere.
Maybe the artificial cirrus clouds keep the earth's surface from heating and thus reduce the amount of convection.
One of the funniest stories today: James Inhofe and an aide in Copehagen as a supposed "Truth Squad".
Nobody knew who this guy was....he gave one press conference attended by a handful of curious foreign journalists. The "consensus" afterwards: the guy is "ridiculous" and a "wacko".
James Inhofe. Giving America a Black Eye abroad.
and the problem will solve itself. Another one of the 8 Great Economic Wonders of the World.
And that's it. Mankind will kill itself off and the earth will go on. If climate change doesn't come soon enough for ya all, worldwide famine will or some nasty bug. They go hand in hand when there just are too many mouths to feed.
If it were that simple, I'd cheer. The earth could use a rest from us, the ugliest, most vicious virus to which it's ever been subjected. But it's not just us that will die. It's EVERYTHING ELSE AS WELL. What's happening isn't going to zero in on humanity; every living thing on the planet will die off. Like nonny mouse said, the planet will recover - but it'll take a few billion years to do so, if then. There's no guarantee even of that.
Ah well, what can you expect from a pack of selfish talking monkeys? Maybe we'll be an object lesson for whatever alien species lands here in a few million years and looks around.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
But do you think that the reason we are such a "virus" and "selfish monkeys" is largely due to genetics, which is beyond our ability to control and so we can't choose to be any other way? If so, then aren't you such a thing as well, i.e. you too are selfish monkeys and a virus to the earth? If so, do you think you should commit suicide?
Is there a way to re-write this? Can you use small words so that our friends on the far right (see: "you warthog faced buffoon") will understand it?
"Trust no one, Mr. Mulder." - Well-Manicured Man
from crap in the sky
the earth will fry
We're all gonna die
So say bye-bye.
How's that?
Much better thanks for the summary nonny!
; )
the stereotype red bull and steroid pumped male racing down main street in their Yukon-Xtra Large, straight face blabbing on the cell fone about the next big "deal", looking in the mirror combing his greased hair? Isn't this the main problem with our society?
If one does not BELIEVE in gloabl warming (As if it were an issue of faith not science), then one is foolish and ignorant.
Yet, if one does not BELIEVE in the 9-11 'story'; choosing instead to apply the tried and true scientific method to even a few of the gaping holes in this greatest lie ever told, then that person is at least a traitor and a bad person; if not also foolish and ignorant.
Maybe the media should tell us when and what to believe; because apparently we're too dumb to figure it out on our own.
green is cheaper, much cheaper. Right now windpower is cheaper than coal. In less that ten years solar will be cheaper than coal. With pluggable hybrid we could in ten year reduce gasoline consumption to 20% of what it is now. The only problem is that the oil and coal companies will be a lot smaller and less profitable so they will fight tooth and nail to keep us burning fossil fuel even if there is a good chance they will destroy the world. They are not going to commit suicide. We must kill them if we are to survive.
some serious financial juggling to make wind power cheaper than coal. It isn't and probably never will be. And it suffers from reliability issues. And the power produced is ill suited to the electrical grid. Solar power is an unsuitable grid power source for many of the same reasons. Add to that the very limited world wide resources of indium tantalum, neodymium and lithium and world wide conversion to those technologies becomes very problematical. Nuclear is the way to go and always has been.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
I remember having a geography class in University that was basically a more expanded version of an Inconvenient Truth back in 1995. The lectures scared the crap out of me, but what is worse is that everything talked about has come true nearly 15 years later. Yet somehow, even with all the evidence that the climate is rapidly shifting, the climate change denier population is increasing. I try to remain positive that we can ultimately rise to the challenge, but I'm starting to believe more and more that the necessary change will never occur.
http://www.all-creatures.org/hope/gw/An_Incon...
Too true
Sums it up nicely!
that this whole thing is either some kind of weird cosmic comedy or a bad dream I will wake up from when I die.
LOL
:)
As a wise man once said, it is very difficult to make a man understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. In the minds of most Americans, their standard of living is more important than anything else, trumping even their own children's and grandchildren's lives. They just flat out DON'T CARE. They want the stuff they're accustomed to, no matter how nonviable, selfish, and impossible it is to sustain. Nothing will change their minds. They will roast to death in the stinking methane-filled air before they give up their stubborn denials.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
I agree. I also think the rich, the greediest, and our leaders, think they'll somehow be able to buy their way out of it.
You know, it'll be "over there", not in my neighbourhood. They're in for a rude awakening, but not today, so... carry on with the party.
far left loon >.<
It is not just that Americans don't care about the future they leave for their children. Compare the photos taken of the crowds at the end of WWII to any photo of crowds today. On average, it looks like our sedentary lifestyles have added at least 50 lbs of blubber to each American. Doing something about climate change will require walking and cycling many of the places we currently get to by 2-ton wheelchairs and living in buildings that are often either colder than 60F or warmer than 80F. Sedentary fat folks find such things physically uncomfortable.
While it is a long and sometimes painful road back from obesity, it can be done. In fact, an old friend of mine who is nearly 60 has reduced his driving from 5 days per week to 2 and increased his cycling from 0 to 100 miles per week. Of course, he is only 80% the man he was 6 months ago when he started this.
This is for you:
http://library.thinkquest.org/trio/TTQ06042/W...
far left loon >.<
Thanks. I had seen that photo once before. It reminds me of a former co-worker. She lived 3 miles from our lab. She would drive to work, put in a couple of hours effort and then go for a ten mile run right past her house. She thought I was from outer space when I suggested she could just run to and from work (we had showers). I wonder what she thought of my 50 mile round-trip bike ride to work.
If you believe that the standard of loiving must come down to protect mother earth, then you have a defeatists attitude worthy of scorn and derision. There is no reason to believe the standard of living cannot continue to improve indefinitely. But you are young and have not experienced life long enough to know how incredibly inventive and creative the human mind and spirit can be. We will advance to an ever better world despite your whinning.
I think one of our big problems with confronting global warming is that a sizable percentage of people believe it's happening but just think it's too damn hard to do anything about it.
A sizable percentage of people also loudly proclaim that it couldn't possibly be happening because it would just be too difficult if it were - kind of the same idea that they want a god to exist so they believe in some religion.
I read somewhere that 42% of Americans not only believe in the second coming and all that end-o-world stuff that comes with it, AND believe this will happen within the next 50 years.
What is their encouragement to preserve?
Think of teenagers having their first wild party and they hear their ma and pa's car pulling up in the driveway, and see their headlights against the opposite wall.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
only I am about to be the pa in the story. My son's band is just breaking up after their first winter break rehearsal.
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
if it really did happen the way they think it will, and they get sucked up into heaven, and one by one they come before their god who then pronounces judgment? And he asks them what they did to preserve and protect the world he gave them, and they have to answer "Uh, nothing. That global warming stuff was all a hoax." And he gets this evil smile on his face and says, "Sorry, it's back to Earth for you." And they get shipped right back here, which by that time won't be Earth anymore, because global warming will have transformed it into...
...HELL.
Wouldn't that be nice?
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
We must be honest, before the "poles" were frozen the planet was a swamp. Hot. Things survived. Now, with the 40% melting of the polar caps(and more to follow) it means more water into the oceans. This will eventually put parts of Florida, parts of Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas back, underwater. There goes all of the ones that didn't believe in the first place. More beach property for us. Win,win! I love this swampy place. Hey, it was swamp in the beginning. Right? Why do you think they call those rednecks: Gator, and Guber and Golmer? Swamp words. Don't stop the global warming. We'll survive....Just head for the hills.
It certainly makes sense to talk about what to do to stop contributing to Global Climate Disruption.
But talking about it as if it were some future threat is naive.
Global Climate Disruption has already begun.
Desertification of Spanish vineyards, turning them to dust bowls.
Disappearance of previously inhabited islands in Bangladesh.
Cities on the East Coast of Africa threatened by encroaching sea.
Greenland Ice Cap melting at alarming rate, totally disrupting economy of Greenland.
Etc, Etc, Etc ...
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
I have been (mostly) silently respecting all your inputs, but this one cries loud for recognition.
And not only that... Sadly, we read articles like that almost every day in the European press and almost every one of them at one time or another points out the sad role the US is playing in all this...
Just like excluding US soldiers from being judjed by the international court in Haag and many other cases, the US - being till recently responsible for almost one third of the worlds pollution - kept silent - and now (luckilly;-) it just rolles the blame over to China and alike.
Let me tell you one thing - if the US had been acting responsebly according to its role in all this, China and the others would have learned by now to play by the rules and stick to them as their share grew up - but with the US acting like something special - hey, why should we act otherwise - after all we are their biggest creditor...
Funny, if it were not for real...
but #1. US soldiers were mostly following orders, so if anyone goes to trial, and I and many Americans would love to see this, it should be the Bush administration.
#2 Not sure how we could exercise too much control over China, they kind of own us now and have our jobs.
I wouldn't like to start a bold discussion, but the US soldiers have beeen kept out of every convention since the Geneva one - so don´t take it in such a short turm. Thanks for your response!
"I was just following orders" hasn't worked as an excuse for quite some time now. I refer you to the unpleasantness in Europe in the middle of the last century for a prime example. Hiding behind "orders" is the refuge of the craven, and should never exonerate anybody.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
Then how do you separate the "enemies from abroad and from inside" upon you swear as a soldier or as a president?
that any European country was ready to permit their soldiers to go before the Hague. I don't believe that any nation has voluntarily done so.
Hasa Diga Eebowai
...because there has to be someone who´s above us all, and I mean - not in Heaven...and not above the law...
edit-didnt reply to correct comment.
"In September of 2001, we got our first real glimpse of what happens if we aren’t pumping vast quantities of particulate crap into the air alongside all the carbon dioxide waste."
... with all its statements about how massive the evidence is, I'm somehow reminded of "Ghostbusters":
"Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947."
"Of course you forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration."
"You have been a participant in the biggest interdimensional cross rip since the Tunguska blast of 1909!"
"During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"
In other words, I feel like I'm being snowed.
Well written...and scary.
not becuase it is not happening, but people latch onto 'warming' and then when it is cold and snows they can guffaw about how it must be the global warming and how it is all a hoax/lie.
They don't read anything about it, but since it says warming, then we should be living in warmer climates. And if it isn't warm, then the science must all be made up!.
I've been annoyed by the phrase "global warming" ever since the media latched onto it. It's too easy for deniers and lazy idiots to use it to "prove" the science is wrong. The phrase should have been "climate change" from the beginning.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
OR-- "how we're fucking over our one and only planet and here's how". It's a bit long, but...
We all live in a giant fishbowl, and we're treating it like there'll be a new one to move into, but there will not.
far left loon >.<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
Read a book now again, you'll feel less snowed.
Do repugs and "independents" have IQ's even that high?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
it doesn't matter what anyone does or says... or doesn't do or say. It doesn't matter what anyone believes. The damage is done. As usual, as it is in our nature as human beings, mankind is a day late and a dollar short. That was a good article Ms. Nonny.
Government + the Federal Reserve = organized crime
Even the "responsible" leaders who actually believe in science are slow walking the process of CO2 reduction, I mean the process of deciding what or if to reduce CO2. The game now is to see how little your own country can do.
Meanwhile the glaciers are melting right now. Greenland's ice cap is receding every year, melt water is lubricating more of the ice/terrain interface every summer - causing the glaciers to move faster. We are going to be too late to stop the loss of the Greenland ice cap. And that will stop the North Atlantic Conveyor - which will cause a regional ice age on the east coast and western Europe.
We need to figure out how to live with the consequences of a warmer planet, we aren't going to stop it. Refugees, loss of farmland, new coastlines - all going to happen. Maybe when enough cities drown and enough people die, we'll finally turn things around fast enough to stop a Venus effect.
I was reading something a while back about how the human animal doesn't react to danger unless it's immediate (right this moment). That doesn't bode well for our future.
Not with an over-populated planet: many wanting a lifestyle as seen on TV. We need a total planet-wide paradigm shift in our thinking. I don't have faith in that; just look around you.
Sorry to be such a downer. Thanks nonny for the article. Everyone keep trying!! We must!!
far left loon >.<
That's the key. That's what no one wants to talk about. That's what no one will even THINK about, but it's the only thing that might save us. If we keep reproducing, it won't matter how drastically we change our lives. We'll still drive the planet to extinction out of simple mathematics.
I'm constantly amazed how even people who claim to be extremely concerned with environmental issues will not raise this issue, no matter how central it is. It's the big black hole in the middle of everything, sucking the entire shebang into itself. We're just GONNA keep making more and more people, they are GONNA keep consuming more and more stuff and spewing more and more pollutants into the atmosphere, and the end will keep coming faster and faster.
But we won't stop. And thereby hangs the tale.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
I just look at what waste (every kind) I generate simply by being alive-- every single day. I live a pretty green lifestyle, but look at all the resources needed for me to live: wood, plastics, fossil-fuel energy, chemicals, metals; our finite resources. Then there are renewable resoucres, which use non-renewable resources: food, water, clothing/fabric. And it's all over-packaged and shipped around the globe.
Yet in many countries, including here in Korea, they are giving tax subsidies for families to have more children. Keep the population large (for nationalistic reasons), keep growing the number of (good Korean) consumers.
China was the only country that realized hey we have way too many people, it's unsustainable, so you can only have 1 kid. The whole world needs to do that, but it's bad for business.
far left loon >.<
http://www.tvo.org/TVO/WebObjects/TVO.woa?vid...
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Abraham Lincoln
whether or not people 'believe' the climate change patterns portend a crisis. The climate is not like Tinkerbelle, that will get better if we clap really hard and "BELIEVE."
How?
Like so: Energy Return on Energy Invested. ERoEI.
In the year 1900 the ERoEI on petroleum was a bit more than 100:1.
Right now, it's about 10:1.
Do the math.
Result: around 2020, the ERoEI of petroleum extraction approaches 1:1.
At that point you leave it in the ground - it's not worth digging up. It would be like trying to live off of eating your own blood. It's thermodynamically stupid. Yes, you COULD do it, for a little while, but only until the strategic reserves were gone.
So, I for one, am not that perturbed about global warming. A huge amount of oil will simply stay in the ground, or be drilled up in small amounts to be used for materials. But not fuel.
And we have about 10 years to put together a new energy infrastructure that doesn't use petroleum.
Yes, we are completely f*cked.
You all need to read "The Party's Over" by Heinberg.
You all need to start organising your neighbourhoods to develop food production.
You need to stomp on the accellerator for wind power and MASSIVE energy efficiency development.
Now.
A simple place to start? NO Xmas Lights. Start there. Then reinsulate your home. Then this spring grow a small food garden. Nothing special. Just some root veggies and similar basics - beans, etc. Learn to do it well. In a few years, get some chickens. Not for meat, per se, but eggs. Get your town to use solar and wind power to keep the water system pumping.
Get this going NOW. Or:
You will die of exposure in 2025 in a refugee camp in January in eastern Oregon, as you shiver to death your cries will be masked by the flap of the tent beating in the hard cold wind.
In 200 years?
Nothing but flowers.
It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
-George Carlin
Chris Mathews made a funny observation about his buddy Pat today that the right wing climate deniers are basically hoping for the world to boil and pop. They believe 'they' will out survive it and everyone else won't be able to and perish.
maybe they will have you believe they dissapeared into the sky but in reality they have decended into the cool interior of the earth to wait out the intentional purging of the surface dwellers. Buchanan even has a nice devil suit picked out.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Nice summary of climate change. Unfortunately, this exact same "for dummies" approach also needs to be taken to explain health-care "reform," and Wall St. "reform," among other things.
Half the problem today is that complex modern issues involve technical facts and terminology which aren't universally understood. And if someone doesn't believe in evolution, despite being surrounded by evidence of it, you're not going to have much luck getting them to accept the reality of climate change.
Their greed is out of control , profit is the number one priority , if it renders the earth uninhabitable so be it .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
Good article. In the eighties I read enough scientific literature to see how bad global warming could be. Welcome to Venus like you say. I haven't seen anything since that contradicts even the worst of the rational scenarios for the resulting climate change. Hopefully the worst won't happen but with the increase of population since the eighties , (and the anticipated future populations) if we don't get a good start on fixing this soon the likelihood of global catastrophe increases more than I want to gamble on. How lucky do you feel?
What are the most common arguments against Global Warming/climate change et al? And the counter-arguments?
The most common arguments against it are "prove it" and "tell it to my lying eyes". They are both convincing lies to anyone who's willing to fool themselves or others.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
I can't believe it's up to almost 120 comments and nobody has even pointed out the fact that CONTRAILS ARE ALL A BIG HOAX!!!11!11! They're actually CHEMTRAILS that the government is spraying on us!
Now, some people think that they're spraying things to cause sterility in white people, others think it's a somewhat more benign thing like testing
avianswine flu vaccine without our consent. But there's no question that it's all a government conspiracy. Because some guy in Arizona put out an air filter outside his house when there were lots of chemtrails overhead, and you know what he found in them? HUMAN RED BLOOD CELLS!!!If that's not definitive proof that the government is spraying us with toxic chemicals, I don't know what is!
**This message brought to you by the Teabagger Party**
Your implication is that we will be alright because one form of pollution balances out another; so, as the globe warms we merely have to increase the number of airline flights to increase reflectivity & hold down temp's with global dimming.
Brother, you need to pull something out of where the sun don't shine, that's for sure.
Why do you have a spray plane(one dropping chemicals and not making a contrails) as the picture?
Contrails start to form over 50 feet behind a plane of that size.
What is it spraying? It looks commercial.
'The devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th, the New World Order was born on Sept 11th.' - Immortal Technique
I think a 747
http://www.flygirl.com/node/46?size=_original
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=747%2...
me-oww!
No Comment......... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kcTvqiMNl8
Well, it´s the good old Earth that will take care of us - we are just (parasite) bugs upon it after all.
And if we keep on not obeying the rules, then the rules will surely change.
And what´s the big fuss all about - the caps will melt, the tides will rise - the Indonesians and alike will have to "go up the country", as the Woodstock song says - they are being earthquaked and flooded all the time anyway - so good for them!!!
In Vienna we´ll get some Spanish wheather - and the half of the USA will be under water - not a big loss anyway...
So keep a smile on your face, while you can!
that these scum sucking politicians have for this bogus problem is to set up a system where we all pay taxes to the World bank. They also are setting up a system for the Vampires on Wall street to make a killing trading Carbon Credits. If you believe these people care about the environment or are truely doing this to save us all you are a FOOL.
... Humans alone can't stop the warming, or cooling. Hubris.
Www.TheFalseFlag.com
I don't really give a fuck. I am childless, and my dna personal stream is over.
But there is so much that is wonderful, beautiful, and amazing that we/you humans seem intent on destroying, it makes me a bit sad. I am consoled that, probably, most of humanity won't survive the coming cataclysm, but I'll be long gone
Global Dimming folks; damned if you do and damned if you don't:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2058...
Five thousand planes, give or take a few, are in flight over the United States at any given moment. In a single day, more than 87,000 are leaving contrails all over those friendly skies. On average, 64 million jet planes take off and land somewhere in the States, leaving behind contrails. Divide six cirrus clouds the size of Massachusetts into 64 million contrails, and that’s a lot of clouds.
What is the time frame for that average? A yearly value? 87,000 planes... call it 100K even, would have to take off 1000 times to get to 100 million (close enough to 64 million) take offs and landings.
1000 take offs and landings per year (not per day) for each plane, sounds more reasonable, but since you are trying to make a serious point please use numbers more precisely and say what you mean.
Also, is that take offs plus landings? Or each take off and landing counted once as a pair?
Otherwise, points well taken
Here's a perverse thought. Bush and his industrialists subverted democracy because they couldn't get what they wanted to cope with forthcoming oil shortages (aka peak oil). They figured (you could argue) that they would act in the greater good (of the US and the west) because the mob really couldn't understand their wisdom.
But now we have a case where the mob REALLY can't understand this wisdom. It may become the task of a wise tyrant to seed the upper atmosphere with sulphur dioxide or other global dimming particles on a unilateral basis simply because we are unable to stop people from emitting carbon.
It's a horrible thought.
I'm going to meditate on the potential for radical unilateral action to save the carbon emitting masses from their own stupidity. Problem is of course that once we start emitting global dimming stuff into the atmosphere, we are engaged in an experiment that could go terribly wrong. And, given that, the benign tyrant is likely to have the courage to begin that experiment only when things are already cycling toward disaster. It may be too late by then.
tiene no idea que tu habla. Tu cabeza es poqueño. Talvez con tiempo tu crecer mas intelligente pero no tener esperar para te.
Tyranny is yet another mass grave of Saddam's found and cataloged this week. Tyranny is Sudan Muslims raping, mutulating, and murdering hundreds of thousands just because they are Christian. Tyranny is gov't taking an ever increasing percantage of a persons income without restraint. The tax code can and does enslave us to the state. Tyranny is gov't forcing one size fits all solutions to falsely perceived problems while exempting themselves of course. Tyranny is fouind in false claims of bigotry when all one does is oppose gov't's growth.
So tell me agaiin about tyranny.
If methane from the ocean's floor is the great boogy man of GW, then slay him. Drill it and use it to produce electricity for electric cars and to recharge hydrogen cell cars. Thereby reducing vehicle emmissions to zero and relieving the pressures of stored methane in the ocenas floors making them more stable.
Uuuhm... 1 or 2 things here.
Contrails DON'T LAST FOR EIGHT HOURS and form a brown sludge pack of retarded clouds.
Chemtrails DO, however. And NO, before you start hiding in your pillow fort made from comfortable brand names such as "UNIPCC climate models" and "The science is SETTLED!" and start calling me a conspiracy nut... Chemtrails exist and it has been thouroughly admitted.
To do what, you say? You got it: fighting global warming err, Climate Change. Sorry.
One other thing; call me insane, but I personally don't think spraying aerosols and assorted softkill mechanisms into the upper atmosphere is a good thing. But hey, Fux Nooz and ABC, CBS and CNN say mercury is good for your brain, so... w/e.
Oh! One OTHER thing ;)
If global warming is real, and the measures to fight it are implemented as stipulated in the Danish text, or the Draft Agreement... Believe me, you guys are NOT going to like it. unless killing 10 million in the Third World because of booming food prices sounds like a party to you...
The Danish text says nothing like you are implying.
Everyone can read the Accord here: http://unfccc.int/2860.php
Of course global warming is real. Where have you been?
As for the 2 phrases, I have seen skeptics make a big deal of that. It's really very simple. Global warming is causing climate change. Not the other way around. Got it? I bet even dummies can understand that.
I mean, it talks about Greenland's ice cap melting as though that were a future thing. It's melting already and has been for awhile now. In fact, it's melting at an accelerated pace, and the permafrost is melting too. In fact, part of the Antarctic ice sheet on one side has begun to break up.
This is already happening so.... if it's too late once Greenland's ice sheet is melting, then it's too late. Deforestation is well on its way too. There is no underestimating the sheer stupidity of Man.
It's survival from here on . . .
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