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Re: global warming a croc [sidious6688]

by avalon02wh on Sat Oct 25 12:32:47 PDT 2008

"Man-made global warming is bs. " Man is altering the climate. Hundreds of millions of vehicles, hundreds of coal power plants, deforestation, agriculture, dams, cities...they all add up. The important question is what impact are we having and what if anything can we do about it. "The earth is dynamic; it heats and cools continuously. " What part of the earth are you referring to? The ocean, atmosphere, the mantle or the core? Just because a system is dynamic does not mean you cannot alter the rate of change or the amplitude. One of the keys to understanding GW and climate is getting a handle on all the feedback loops. Was the industrialization of humans responsible for the end of the last ice age? Maybe.... "New research suggests humans were influencing the world's climate long before the Industrial Revolution." http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0909-niwa_csiro.html "It simply an excuse to drain your wallet. " Spoken like a true non-scientist. What I find funny is that people have no problem dropping $40,000 or $50,000 on a vehicle just because of the trinkets they throw in. But if you mention anything to do with spending money on understanding GW they have a cow.

Re: Action plan [kernick]

by houdini1 on Mon Sep 15 12:11:07 PDT 2008

Everytime you fire up the AC, the heat (anyone use natural gas or oil) the TV, ... and you're not pulling your power from nuclear or renewable, then you're creating GHG's Well, all those things gotta go!! No wait. We can just quadruple the electric rates from coal or natural gas generated electricity AND ban nuclear. Then send the extra profits to Al Gore. That'll show us!

Re: No [1stpik]

by andys120 on Sat Sep 06 10:45:22 PDT 2008

Your point about mileage is a good one, I haven't seen a good citation concerning the relative fuel efficiencies of gas vs diesel vs CNG in vehicular use. If it were 10-15% less efficient it might be a worthwhile alternative depending on pricing. The fact is that there already thousands of vehicles running on CNG, due to the lack of infrastructure, most are in municipal vehicles, transit systems and commercial fleets. When I was in Mesa AZ (pop 432,000) I noticed that almost all city-owned vehicles were CNG including the cop cars. The real question in my mind is exactly how large are domestic reserves? They aren't large in relative terms, most NG reserves are in Russia and the Middle East. There are plenty of non-vehicular uses for it, NG is the most common heating fuel in America and it powers the majority of our electrical plants where it's favored because it burns cleaner than coal (I'll address nuclear later). We do in fact already import a good deal of gas, every three months or so the USCG bars all movement in Boston Harbor in order to prevent sabotage or damage to gi-normous LNG tanker coming in from Algeria. Tanker entering Boston Harbor with East Boston and Logan airport ahead, the Zakim Bridge to Charlestown behind> Everett Ma, 6 or 7 miles from Downtown Boston> Nice view from those condos, eh? I don't deny that CNG might be a part of any comprehensive energy solution but we'd better take a good look at it before we by the contentions of the industry at face value, It's the same-quasi-monopolistic industry that controls the gasoline, heating oil and diesel markets. I feel similarly about nuclear and all-electric cars. Nuclear plants can be clean and safe. I know guys who've worked with it in US Naval warships but their are tremendous waste disposal problems associated with it. I support it for now but it's a deal w the Devil. We are likely many decades away from all-electric cars as real alternatives to vehicles as we now use them.

Re: Oh My Amigo Gary - so much fun to debate with you !!! [kernick]

by larsb on Tue Aug 12 13:34:28 PDT 2008

kernick says, "Whether you cut back on your production of CO2 matters little, as there are hundreds of people willing to hack open a pipeline and burn the fuel in crude pots and pans." Actually, that's a "cop out" that people have used for a while to downplay ANY type of conservation. And it's completely UNTRUE to say that, regardless of how logical and common-sensical you might think it to be. Why? Because every ounce of fossil fuel I DON'T burn does not get burned. I could have used it, but did not. Therefore it technically does not get burned. Any CO2 that YOU burn was YOUR piece of the pie. Just because you ate your pie didn't mean MY pie suddenly ate itself, does it? Someone else might waste an equal amount to the amount I saved, but that does not "cancel me out" because I did my part in reducing the demand already. Which is better: having TWO people wasting electricity, or having one conserving and one wasting? Looking at it from a direct electricity example: If I use 1500 less kilowatt hours this year, that's 1500 less that the electric company had to generate. That savings is real. They ACTUALLY DID NOT BURN the coal for that 1500 kw because the demand was not there for it. Regardless if someone in China wasted 1500 kwh - his use had no relationship to my lack of use. I can hear you now saying: "In the END GAME, it will all get burned anyway." And that is true, it will. But the longer we can POSTPONE the burning, the more time we give technology and smart people to come up with ways to dissipate and eliminate the waste exhaust. The benefits of energy conservation are countless and concrete. Reducing our demand means fewer future power plants can be built, saving a lot of energy and resources right there. Conservation reduces the effect that foreign powers can have on our political decisions regarding foreign resources. ( You think we would put up with the Saudis high oil prices and their oppressive society and their human rights abuses unless they had us by the cajones regarding oil ??? ) If cities and towns use less fuel, less of our tax dollars go to wasted electricity. Fuel price spikes are felt far less in city fleets if their usage is way down. I like my taxes to be spent on important stuff, not wasted stuff. Companies which use less electricity have more money to put back into the company and the employees, which strengthens the economy and helps keep inflation and unemployment lower. Saying "anything I conserve will just be wasted by someone else" is a poor excuse and just shows someone is being too lazy to do it themselves so they try to come up with a cute retort. Waste is not cute.

Re: Poll [larsb]

by gagrice on Mon Aug 11 17:46:59 PDT 2008

I'm not Al Gore. Too bad, you would have gotten rich off of your passion for the environment. Problem is Al Gore has an agenda. It took him a few years to build his model for making money. Being that Bill Clinton did not want him around DC, he sent him all over the World spreading his alarmist theory. When the leaders of the World realized there was big money to be made they jumped on the GW bandwagon. Of course all the little minds would follow any Chicken Little idea. If, man has anything to do with the earth getting warmer or cooler, there is little we can do to avoid it. Probably the biggest cause are the gigantic concrete and asphalt jungles we build and call cities. So the first thing would be to get everyone out of those gigantic heat generators and onto their own little plot of land out in the middle of Kansas or Oklahoma. Get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun. Grow what you like to eat and put a very small carbon footprint on the earth. Be sure and scoop up the horse poop. If you liked Kyoto the thing you would do is raise everyone's utility bills to the point they cannot pay and they will be shut off. Shut down any electric generation system that uses carbon fuel for generation or manufacturing of additional generation equipment. Will the solar cell recoup in its lifetime the pollution caused in mfg? Or you can do as the Chief Priest of the Global Warming Cult, and get a 100 foot house boat for the coming flood. Make your carbon footprint as large as the leader would be my advice. My view is Al Gore has set back legitimate environmental concerns by about 50 years with his made up GW scam. We were just getting over all the hype from the media and whackos like Carl Sagan about a cooling trend. Later to be called "Global Cooling" to differentiate between it and the later scam. Concern peaked in the early 1970s, partly because of the cooling trend then apparent (a cooling period began in 1945, and two decades of a cooling trend suggested a trough had been reached after several decades of warming), and partly because much less was then known about world climate and causes of ice ages. Although there was a cooling trend then, it should be realised that climate scientists were perfectly well aware that predictions based on this trend were not possible - because the trend was poorly studied and not understood (for example see reference. However in the popular press the possibility of cooling was reported generally without the caveats present in the scientific reports. My question. Following the war was the biggest boom in history from an industrial standpoint. Everyone wanted a new car, the coal fired generators were spewing massive amounts of GHG into the atmosphere. Yet it was cooling down the planet. Maybe you can explain that????

Re: Just saw... [vchiu]

by houdini1 on Wed Jul 30 17:19:08 PDT 2008

The post that you replied to just contains some general observations based on your previous posts. What's not to understand? I thought it was rather clear. Apart from maybe having some coal or oil stocks buried somewhere in a mutual fund, my main interest here is to refute the "sky is falling gloom and doom" scenario that we see here so often. Conservation and doing what you can to prevent waste is a good thing, but committing vast resources in support of nothing more than a theory does not seem like a wise choice to me.