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Climate change
#1
Posted 24 May 2011 - 05:26 PM

Maybe it's time to look at Geothermal energy among other alternatives.
Thoughts?
#2
Posted 24 May 2011 - 07:54 PM

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone."
#3
Posted 24 May 2011 - 08:29 PM

#4
Posted 25 May 2011 - 01:38 AM

Climate Progress has an interesting piece looking at a report by the Austalian Climate Commission which concludes this decade is critical if we want to prevent a runaway cycle warming up the atmosphere more and more.
Maybe it's time to look at Geothermal energy among other alternatives.
Thoughts?
I fear 2060s on this planet might not be pleasant for much of humanity, when i say 2060s, i mean late 2050s and early 2070s might also be lost to climate hazards caused by our industrial activity today. I fear by the time we hit 2020s (last decade of relatively normal climate) it will be bit too late and too little.
Effects of global warming scientist have warned us about has passed and we are now going to live with consequences, early effects which we can already see hitting northern europe, america, africa and asia too.
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
#5
Posted 25 May 2011 - 02:12 AM

#6
Posted 25 May 2011 - 02:26 AM

I just think that we are over reacting to the natural occurrence of climate change.
We are overreacting even if it was manmade, which is certainly possible. It was 3 degrees warmer 120,000 years ago.
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. - Carl Sagan
#7
Posted 25 May 2011 - 07:31 AM

#8
Posted 25 May 2011 - 10:05 AM

Well, 97% of scientists do.I don't really think climate change is really that bad.
http://www.skeptical...al-warming.html
These are people with PhD's, decades of experience and literally mountains of empirical, peer-reviewed evidence.
Oh right. Humans are somehow "separate" from the Earth, are they? We somehow "don't count".Considering the fact that it is a naturally occurring.
Of course, climate change is naturally occurring. The point is that we're greatly accelerating the process.
Weather and climate are two completely different things.Nothing in nature changes as fast as the weather people and the hippies are predicting.
"A few"? There are hundreds, possibly thousands of organisations studying climate change.I also do not trust the few organizations that put out the Climate Change/Global Warming stuff virally whereas it was found some of their 'evidence' was fraudulent.
None of their evidence was found to be fraudulent. That's just what Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine wants you to believe.
That's just your personal "gut feeling". Call me old fashioned, but I'd rather trust the countless empirical, peer-reviewed studies by climate experts - who are in strong agreement that our 30 gigatons of CO2 emissions per year are now having a serious effect on the environment. The CO2 doesn't just magically disappear. Especially when we're cutting down the world's forests at an exponential rate.I just think that we are over reacting to the natural occurrence of climate change.
"Somewhat"? I think "catastrophically" might be a better term.While we have damaged the environment somewhat and it depends on the area, we can never match the destructive forces of nature.
The Earth is a Ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse

That's just total, utter crap - blatant right-wing propaganda.One Volcano Eruption puts as much ash into the atmosphere as the entire human civilization has ever created in its lifetime!
Human activity releases 130 times more CO2 than all of the volcanoes on Earth combined.

Look at the global population if you want more evidence of our impact. The only reason it's expanded so rapidly is because we exploited fossil fuels. There simply shouldn't be this many people on a finite world, it's obvious we're now having an effect, and we're going to pay the price in the form of a rapidly worsening environment -

#9
Posted 26 May 2011 - 12:39 AM

#10
Posted 26 May 2011 - 04:09 AM

#11
Posted 26 May 2011 - 08:10 AM

#12
Posted 27 May 2011 - 01:13 AM

OK none of their evidence was found to be fraudulent? What about that big story about the Hacked E-Mails from a British University in 2009??? This got wide media coverage not only on the right. The Emails showed collaboration among the scientists to release the data even though they were unsure of their 'predictions' and knew that some of their results were overestimated.
In Open Source software that would be called 'release early, release often'. It would have been nice if they had been more open about their data and results from the get go, sure. As long as the reports that were released had error bars in the right places to show their level of uncertainty, I don't see why this would discredit the entire study. As more and more data comes in and more and more analysis is done, subsequent publications will have narrowed down the uncertainty.
Anthropomorphising a bit, I don't think the Earth cares one way or the other, it'll long be here after our species is gone, cataclysmic climate mass extinction event or no. A sentient Earth might even be understood as having a fever to burn out some nasty pests (us), but again, it'll recover. Not that I subscribe to any theory the Earth is sentient, we're after all neither 7 foot tall nor blue and most of us don't have ponytails.
As for having only studied the past 50 years of weather data, it turns out that's not the case. Take for example the crowd sourced Old Weather project to which I've contributed; it isn't specifically about global warming, but detailed knowledge of past weather does help our understanding.
I agree that correlation is not by definition a sign of causation, but when you add up all signals, it's really hard to escape a conclusion in line with the 97% of scientists Will mentioned above.
Regardless of any human contribution or lack thereof, it's untenable to claim climate isn't changing. That it will become very uncomfortable (at the very least) for human beings for a while should also be clear. Even if the human contribution is small, it might very well be the straw that broke the camel's back, or a catalyst that accelerates the underlying pattern of climate change; that we do have an impact is clear, so even if we can't agree on just how much of an impact, it would still behoove us all to mitigate our footprint as much as we can.
We can do this because we think oil prices are getting out of hand or we'd like to leave our grandchildren some forests to camp in or really any number of selfish reasons. Personally I'd rather my grandchildren looked back at this age and be able to say, 'Meh, a lot of fuss about nothing as it turns out, but I'm glad they cleaned up their act because the world's a much better smelling place than it would have been' and have been wrong in my assumptions than to have grandchildren whose drive for survival requires them to commit what would otherwise be considered immoral acts, and have been right. (not that I'm saying it's a matter of exactly 2 generations, but as an illustration).
Even if we're overreacting in calling this human made or are overestimating the extent, we're better off acting and be damn quick about it. The future will thank us, and personally I'm 'young' enough that I'll thank myself in my golden years.
Anyway, I leave you all to ponder this article, wondering honestly if someone can come away reading it still skeptical.
edit; fix typo
#13
Posted 27 May 2011 - 01:50 AM

NASA is loosing funding fast because of the private space industry,
huh?
oh people want to fly in space and their willing to pay for it!!!!
*starts to hyperventilate
This is a BAD thing?
We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. - Carl Sagan
#14
Posted 27 May 2011 - 02:17 PM

NASA is loosing funding fast because of the private space industry,
huh?
oh people want to fly in space and their willing to pay for it!!!!
*starts to hyperventilate
This is a BAD thing?
While not wanting to play moderator, and not saying the bit you quoted was indeed entirely clear, do you mind if the future either not making replies like this or saying something more substantial instead? I'm no moderator or administrator, but I think I share their wish in seeing constructive debate whereas this feels more like an off-the-cuff throwaway remark. Please take this not as personal criticism but a constructive one.
Thanks.
#15
Posted 27 May 2011 - 02:37 PM

This is an important point and one I definitely agree with, though I do not think it should be used as an excuse by some to ignore climate change. We, as well as our descendents as you pointed out, still need to live on this planet and the preference would be for it to be in good condition [for our inhabitation] for as long as possible. To dismiss climate change because it's always happened over long periods is short-sighted, really. If we're in a position where we can do something about it, we should.I don't think the Earth cares one way or the other, it'll long be here after our species is gone, cataclysmic climate mass extinction event or no.
~Jon
#16
Posted 27 May 2011 - 03:17 PM

OK none of their evidence was found to be fraudulent? What about that big story about the Hacked E-Mails from a British University in 2009??? This got wide media coverage not only on the right. The Emails showed collaboration among the scientists to release the data even though they were unsure of their 'predictions' and knew that some of their results were overestimated
No.
What the press implied from the emails was that the evidence was fraudulent.
They discussed these emails and their research data on an episode of Horizon, late last year I think. The data itself was fine, matching the trends of other climate data, but they needed to present the data to somebody internally. They drew up several graphs and after much discussion decided to use the simplified chart, as the other charts had lots of unnecessary data that would confuse their presentation. They aggregated their data using a "trick" in the data splicing, presumably to keep the data representative of the overall trends while averaging (I can't remember, it was a while ago when I watched the episode).
But the email itself was out of context, and when climate skeptics/the press picked up on it, all they could understand was that someone was "lied" to and it must have been a bad thing.
The vast majority of scientists, as has been mentioned, agree that climate change is a problem, and they agree that mankind is having an effect. What they disagree on is how much of an effect mankind is really having, which causes problems with regards to finding a solution: if you can't be sure of the cause, you can't devise an effective solution. It's outside of the scientific community, in the press and public discussion, that it becomes an argument of whether global warming/climate change is actually happening or not - to the point where the two terms may or may not be used interchangeably depending on the point someone is trying to put across. A vague example? I think its republican lobbyists (? don't know American politics well) that will claim global warming isn't happening, but climate change is.
Try not to confuse popular opinion with expert opinion.
NASA is losing funding because the american government can't justify the expenditure with the expensive methods they use for minimal gain, and the space shuttle program is one of the biggest costs they should never have had (Air Force involvement made the whole project more costly than necessary). The ESA and Russian space agency have methods for ISS equipment and personnel movement, and satellite launching, that are far cheaper and more developed that current NASA alternatives (namely, the space shuttle), and I'm sure NASA will make use of these (they're already becoming involved in an ESA joint project, after all).NASA is loosing funding fast because of the private space industry, oh people want to fly in space and their willing to pay for it!!
The private space industry is gaining traction because they're finding more cost effective methods of getting out of our atmosphere, cost effective methods that NASA can use (see: SpaceX kerosene engines). Most of the money is in resource and personnel transport for large projects like the ISS, and soon the Orion project (although I've heard suggestions that Orion is a "make-work" project to keep people employed until it either happens, or they can't sustain it any longer, but it's got a good change of happening). Space tourism, if that's what you're referring to in your comment (I can't be sure) has a minimal market right now. The number of people that have gone up that can be classified as tourists is ~10, since the beginning of the century. Maybe when Virgin Galactic gets going that number will rise a bit faster, but for now it's not much of a market.
And to clarify the point, should have not been obvious first time around, NASA has never been the only organisation capable of putting things in space. Their cuts in funding don't change the bigger picture all that much.
But I'm not sure what NASA has to do with climate change so, err, yeah. I mean Virgin Galactic might get held back if their engine emissions are too high, and kerosene engines might be slightly cleaner, but the space industry doesn't really have much it can do about it right now seeing as its traffic is quite low. Though canning the shuttle program maybe helps a little.
#17
Posted 27 May 2011 - 03:18 PM

This is an important point and one I definitely agree with, though I do not think it should be used as an excuse by some to ignore climate change. We, as well as our descendents as you pointed out, still need to live on this planet and the preference would be for it to be in good condition [for our inhabitation] for as long as possible. To dismiss climate change because it's always happened over long periods is short-sighted, really. If we're in a position where we can do something about it, we should.I don't think the Earth cares one way or the other, it'll long be here after our species is gone, cataclysmic climate mass extinction event or no.
Oh, indeed. I hardly meant that simile as license to do what we want because "what's the point, we're dooooooomed! let's party, and if we're still here tomorrow, let's party some more!".
As another simile: While I'm a great proponent of parties, it would be short-sighted indeed not to think about the long-term impact. If you need a selfish motivation, just think that with a modicum of care you'll get to party more and party longer, so long as you clean up after yourself. Instead if leaving things as they are you'll soon find there's no place to dance without wading through garbage, and making out is troublesome when you have to wear a re-breather so as not to choke.
#18
Posted 27 May 2011 - 03:44 PM

OK none of their evidence was found to be fraudulent? What about that big story about the Hacked E-Mails from a British University in 2009??? This got wide media coverage not only on the right. The Emails showed collaboration among the scientists to release the data even though they were unsure of their 'predictions' and knew that some of their results were overestimated
But I'm not sure what NASA has to do with climate change so, err, yeah.
Prehaps you didn't read the paragraph where I explained NASA's planned missions for a Moon Base to help mine for resources? That will help the Environment here on Earth wouldn't it? We wouldn't be using as much of our oil/resources/fossil fuels if we already had a base and a mining plan in place like they planned. I don't think any other space industry is working on this, they are more concerned with classified science experiments and tourism.
#19
Posted 27 May 2011 - 03:48 PM

NASA is loosing funding fast because of the private space industry,
huh?
oh people want to fly in space and their willing to pay for it!!!!
*starts to hyperventilate
This is a BAD thing?
While not wanting to play moderator, and not saying the bit you quoted was indeed entirely clear, do you mind if the future either not making replies like this or saying something more substantial instead? I'm no moderator or administrator, but I think I share their wish in seeing constructive debate whereas this feels more like an off-the-cuff throwaway remark. Please take this not as personal criticism but a constructive one.
Thanks.
Good points Nom du Clavier.
You are taking my quotes out of context and/or are not doing enough research to even try and make a point or claim or anything constructive really. I don't think you hyperventilating and questioning current well known news helps in the debate...
#20
Posted 27 May 2011 - 03:56 PM

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. - Carl Sagan
Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: climate change, global warming, man made, energy
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