Huge Chunk of Ice Breaks Off of Antarctica

[SuperJerk 0]

No problem. For added irony, I'll link you to a website run by "global warming" lunatics.

 

http://www.planetextinction.com/planet_ext...nk_reversal.htm

 

I'd be more concerned with presenting accurate information than being ironic, were I you.

 

That was too poorly written to be considered a reliable source. For example, it switches between pounds and kilograms measuring CO2 emissions within the same sentence, talks about an unproven 30-year lag in between carbon emission and when it actually affects the atmosphere, gives few hard numbers to back its claims up, talks about how added stress from being 1 degree more than the previous average temperature (I presume that's what they mean, since they never define what that temperature is), and the only footnotes is does give to tell where the info came from is inaccessible.

 

If you really believe that the worst-case scenario this page laid out is already happening (something they don't claim) and trees are already put out more CO2 than they are scrubbing, then the only solution is to immediately stop burning fossil fuels, which I don't think you advocate.

[Firestarter 0]

I'd be more concerned with presenting accurate information than being ironic, were I you.

 

That was too poorly written to be considered a reliable source...

Fair enough. My mistake; I just assumed it cited most of its facts from the well-known Nature study of the same problem.

 

If you really believe that the worst-case scenario this page laid out is already happening (something they don't claim) and trees are already put out more CO2 than they are scrubbing, then the only solution is to immediately stop burning fossil fuels, which I don't think you advocate.

While I don't immediately see the connexion, I wouldn't mind cutting back on fossil fuel consumption drastically - though my motivation would be to weaken Mohammedan countries, and I'd do it by building oh say 100 new nuclear power plants tomorrow.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

At about, what? 18 billion apiece with ten years or so to get them operational? I'm all for nuclear power, but the issues with building them are gargantuan, not the least of which is securing the reactors, the fuel sources, and waste disposal processes.

[EricMM 0]

In general trees act as "scrubbers" when they're growing. When they're all already grown they don't absorb as much CO2, at least to my knowledge.

 

But the fact that there are always things growing in the rain forest belies that claim. Anyways, bulldozing a tree eliminates any CO2 absorbing it was doing, and then it decomposes, releasing CO2.

 

Why Republicans have such a stick up their ass about conservation being the first "green" source of "energy" we have is mind boggling. The thought of frugality hurts them, somehow. Also if we could just improve our infrastructure, high capacity renewable energy sources like the southwest desert for solar and the midwest plains for wind could power much larger swaths of our country, not just the surrounding area. Lastly, if we could only manage to create a storage medium for energy that is better than the battery designed hundreds of years ago, we'd be in a much better place when it cames to renewable energy.

[The Niggardly King 0]

Everything that you have known about global warming has been a lie

[SuperJerk 0]

Everything that you have known about global warming has been a lie

 

That had all the production values of those video tapes Jerry Falwell used to sell about Vince Foster and the Arkansas drug trade.

[Firestarter 0]

At about, what? 18 billion apiece with ten years or so to get them operational? I'm all for nuclear power, but the issues with building them are gargantuan, not the least of which is securing the reactors, the fuel sources, and waste disposal processes.

Have NASA start doing something useful for a change and fire it off into the sun.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

You're willing to trust NASA with a rocket full of volatile radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere? How about the Russians and Chinese following suit as they surely would given a new successful waste disposal method? Seems like that method would lend itself to a big glowing "OOPS!" or "OOPS! *wink*" at some point.

 

Let's stick with the salt mines in the desert.

[Firestarter 0]

You're willing to trust NASA with a rocket full of volatile radioactive waste in the upper atmosphere?

You have a point, given how utterly incompetent NASA has shown itself to be in the past, when it's not merely useless.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Don't worry, NASA, I got your back.

[EricMM 0]

THANK YOU, Tzar, for nipping THAT ONE in the bud.

 

After all, what we do, China does next. We want the people responsible for the Three Gorges Dam to be launching rockets with nuclear materials?

 

Spend every cent you would spend on new nuke plants on renewable energy.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Y'know, Hydroelectric dams probably wreak a lot more havoc than a nuclear plant, environmentally speaking. Ditto huge wind turbine and solar arrays thay don't produce a fraction of the power of a comparable nuclear reactor.

 

How about taking that fake money away from both our fake nuclear plants and fake dams and arrays and thoroughly modernize and improve the national power grid?

 

 

[EricMM 0]

I would not complain about that at all.

 

But while you're basically correct about Hydropower, wind turbines certainly don't kill as many birds as buildings with windows do, or air/mercury pollution from coal power.

 

Nukes are clean until they aren't, and then they really AREN'T. And there's also the waste.

[Guest Tzar Lysergic]

Not talking about birds so much as I'm talking about how much land they need to take up to really be effective, and where that land is located. No way wind turbines could provide a majority of this country's energy demands. Even looking over to Europe, the numbers I see put Denmark as the frontrunner with nearly 20% of their energy produced from wind.

 

A nuclear plant can sustain cities, and pollutes far less than fossil fuels.

[Guest Teal-y Dan]

When I drive down to Bloomington, there's a big wind farm around Paw Paw, I think it is. I really can't see how these things, substantial as this one may be, can really generate THAT much energy.

[EricMM 0]

The largest turbines can generate 6MW. (as per wiki)

 

obviously the biggest ones aren't applicable everywhere, but the more we build and install, the more power you get. And add to that solar power, and there are certainly windy and sunny parts of this country that could generate massive amounts of power for our use. It's just getting it from there to here. See: Tzar's suggestion about the power grid.

[At Home 0]

Hey, I finally got some graphs and shit!

 

So this graph indicates the level of CO2 over tens of thousands of years and the average temperature in the same time period. As we see, the two are closely related. Civilization as we know it is in the pretty stable yet very short line on the very left of the graphs, dating back about 15,000 years. So the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere jumped up very high before civilization even began to exist. The amount of CO2 production by humans have not caused the increase in temperature, as coal, oil, gas, etc only began to be used as a main source of energy really in the last 100 years or so. A conclusion we must draw is that CO2 does not cause warming, but is an indicator of it.

 

 

Conclusion: CO2 levels have not affected the shrinking of glaciers, even though it increased by several times in the last 50 years.

 

 

Same thing for the seas.

 

 

However, a better correlation exists between the number of sunspots on the sun and the temperature at the poles.

 

[EricMM 0]

woot woot it's still here!

 

[EricMM 0]

 

Mah gawd the power!

 

Look at the little truck at the base...

 

I think this one had bad brakes and gears.

[At Home 0]

Is anyone interested in reading the paper I wrote on sun variance and climate change? An astronomer who has a doctorate from Princeton gave me the lecture that I based the paper on personally. It's not the best paper I've ever written grammatically, but content-wise it's all there. It's not too long: 5 pages, double spaced.

[EricMM 0]

I am not in the habit of reading papers based upon rubbish.

[Firestarter 0]

Is anyone interested in reading the paper I wrote on sun variance and climate change? An astronomer who has a doctorate from Princeton gave me the lecture that I based the paper on personally. It's not the best paper I've ever written grammatically, but content-wise it's all there. It's not too long: 5 pages, double spaced.

Certainly. I am unfamiliar with this lecture.

 

I am not in the habit of reading papers based upon rubbish.

However, Eric is apparently in the habit of judging ideas based on his own preconceptions.

[Jingus 0]

An astronomer who has a doctorate from Princeton

=

rubbish

 

...oookay.

[EricMM 0]

I tried for years to bring the arguments on this issue.

 

The fact is that there will always be a few scientists on the side of deniers.

 

But if, by this point, you just disagree, willfully, with Global Warming, what else can anyone do? If the mass of scientific knowledge and evidence cannot convince you of something, it cannot.

 

There are also people who don't believe in evolution. *shrug*

[Firestarter 0]

So? Darwin made a lot of mistakes. Even today the theory of evolution and its mechanisms is debated.

 

And I'm still waiting for your "mass of scientific knowledge and evidence" to explain how CO2 levels can simultaneously predate and cause "global warming."

[EricMM 0]

[Firestarter 0]

Never actually read Origin of Species, have you? How about Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium, do you know about the 1989 controlled experiments which sought to prove that? How about the new research on the parallel evolution of sensing organs with deep-sea crustaceans?

[EricMM 0]

It was more the predate vs. cause thing. As things that cause change generally come before them.

[Firestarter 0]

It was more the predate vs. cause thing. As things that cause change generally come before them.

Indeed. And the temperature increases have been shown to predate increases in carbon levels. So your point would be?

[SuperJerk 0]

It was more the predate vs. cause thing. As things that cause change generally come before them.

Indeed. And the temperature increases have been shown to predate increases in carbon levels. So your point would be?

1) That's not what you said, though.

 

2) And I don't believe you.