Global Warming - defeatable?

Bottle_of_Smoke

Global warming is the new hot topic.

Ways to slow it down have been presented to us as decreasing our energy usuage/recycling etc.

I've started to think myself that this is useless. I think we're just far too successsful a primate & the earth's completely overpopulated with humans.

Perhaps when the effects of global warming start destroying our habitats mass deaths will occur & the population will be reduced to a level the earth can handle.

Maybe I'm wrong - maybe reducing carbon emissions will allow the earth to heal itself. Though I think realistically severe damage is already done & the only way to un-do it would be to develop a chemical to allow carbons trapped in the upper atmosphere to escape.

anyone have any more ideas/information etc?

The Sweeper

You should read some of the transcripts from the US Congressional hearings on global warming.

The upshot is that the earth appears to be going through a natural warming cycle - the same way there are ice ages, there are warm periods. This is pushing the temperature up a few degrees.

In addition, carbon emissions in the last 200 years are accelerating that warming and adding another few degrees on top. it means that the planet isn't being allowed go through a gradual cycle - one that would allow animals to migrate and plants to adjust. The change is quicker and less tolerable.

It is essential that we reduce carbon emissions immediately, but we need to be very aware that a lot of damage is already done. In the next ten years, there will be extreme weather conditions and increasing climate change, expressed through colder winters and warmer summers.

That's the best scenario. (Personally, I think 'The Day After Tommorrow' is a public service information film.)

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

(Personally, I think 'The Day After Tommorrow' is a public service information film.)

...

wow


on another note, shouldn't this thread be on the science forum? global warming is an issue for science and scientists.. not the humanities.

311

The really funny part of all this is ,we are not here because we designed the planet.

I knew about aerosols back in school when thatcher was around. Shti everyone knew about it then .

There is no waiting around this ,bombs are manufactured and the heat is rising.

mike65

It can't be halted as it is in part natural but the worst of it might be avoidible
but only if we really want to change and quickly. CO2 should be the main concern but in this country as in many what to do with waste seems to hog most government thinking time. We have to plant trees, use trees, get off petrol in particular (low CO2 diesel much less damaging), learn to put on a sweater rather then turn the heat up (its what our parents/grandparents did!), go nuclear (yes really) stop flying at the drop of a hat, eat local produce as much as possible.

Basicly turn the clock back about 40 years in certain lifestyle respects.

Mike.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

quick google turned this up, I'd heard similar from robert newman when i saw a vid of his a few weeks ago

University of NSW Institute of Environmental Studies senior lecturer Dr Mark Diesendorf says atomic power stations do not emit carbon dioxide (CO2) themselves, but the processes involved in creating atomic energy do.

Mining, milling, uranium enrichment, atomic fuel production, power station construction and operation, storage and reprocessing of spent fuel, long-term management of radioactive waste and closing down old power stations all require the burning of fossil fuels, he says.

"Most of the energy inputs to the full life cycle of atomic fuel come from fossil fuels and are therefore responsible for CO2 emissions," Dr Diesendorf writes in this month's edition of the Australasian Science magazine.

Atomic power stations using high-grade uranium ores would have to run for seven to 10 years before they created enough power to cancel out the energy required to establish them.

http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/07/atomic-power-creates-more-greenhouse.html


nuclear energy isn't all tha tmuch cleaner in the long run, not if we're thinking in terms of stopping global warming anyway.

simu

Mordeth wrote:

...

wow


on another note, shouldn't this thread be on the science forum? global warming is an issue for science and scientists.. not the humanities.

Nah, it's an issue for everyone on the planet. However, I don't see any major changes happening to try and keep this place habitable until a lot more damage has been done tbh. We're all too enthralled by consumerism and a blind faith in "progress".

Bottle_of_Smoke

Mordeth wrote:

quick google turned this up, I'd heard similar from robert newman when i saw a vid of his a few weeks ago



http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/07/atomic-power-creates-more-greenhouse.html


nuclear energy isn't all tha tmuch cleaner in the long run, not if we're thinking in terms of stopping global warming anyway.

I see your point but really 7-10yrs isn't all that long - & eventually almost all those processes could be powered from electricity from already built nuclear plants/

Howeve the waste from fission is a problem - maybe worse than CO2
I heard fusion's roughly 60 years off -

Do stricter laws need to be applied? I'm just thinking that most people have the idea that "well what I do wont make a difference to the bigger picture so yes i will leave the heating on all night"

Maybe incentives for people who don't drive cars? I think it's a ridiculous people who use flights are frowned upon whereas motorists are overlooked.

Less cows means less methane emissions - how about making people realise meat is healthier if you have 2/3 portions a week rather than a 3 per day.

Huge taxes being placed upon intensive farming - grants for organic/traditional methods?

Celticfire

Junkyard wrote:

I think the root of the problem with global warming is the fact the the so called "experts" are tweaking their figures and basing their figures on wrong information to start with. There was a warm period from AD 950 to 1450 approx. and this has been omitted from the research the UN would have us believe. This warm period was warmer than the warmer period by up to 3 degrees C. From the year 1000, ships were recorded as having sailed in parts of the Arctic where there is a permanent ice-pack now. In 1421, a Chinese Imperial Navy squadron sailed right round the Arctic and found no ice anywhere. It is possible that at that time there was less of an icecap at the North Pole than there is now, particularly in summer and the polar bears survived. Even though there has been a lot of talk about the supposed threat posed by the warmer Arctic, the polar bears are thriving in the current warm period. 11 of the 13 principle known families are prospering as never before.
Greenland was actually green at one time, Eric the red named Greenland "Greenland" to encourage Danish settlers, because in his time south-western Greenland was in fact green, no ice whatsoever. Until 1425 it was extensively cultivated when farms were suddenly overrun by permafrost. The Viking agricultural settlements are still under permafrost to this day, a very good indicator that the middle ages were warmer than the present, and that there is little cause for alarm at the current melting of Greenland glaciers because they are very likely to have melted to more than their present extent during the medieval warm period. This medieval warm period was followed by a 300 year little ice age until 1750. At the start of this period the mean temperatures dropped by 1.5 degrees C in 100 years. The coldest period was from 1550 to 1700. Frost fairs were held on the River Thames in London. Not only is this warm period not shown up on the UN's graph of temperature over the past 1000 years, the little ice age is also missing. From 1750, temperatures rose and held steady until the late Victorian era. These temperature fluctuations were not caused by humankind's activities. The 1996 report included a graph illustrating them. By the time of the 2001 report, the UN had eradicated the medieval warm period.The UN's 2001 graph, also know as the "hockey stick" showed that the erasure of the medieval warm period in the 2001 graph had been caused by inappropriate data selection and the incorrect use of statistical methods.
The big problem with science is that they are generally funded by governments, and this is world-wide by the way. Its generally agreed that the fundamental equation of State-subsidised science is "No problem equals no funding" The UN's documents occasionally acknowledge the British government's funding. The fact that the central graph of the UN's 2001 report was defective has not had anything like as much attention from the media as the stories of impending disaster which politicians and the UN itself have derived from it.
An independent report by statisticians, probably the most devastating scientific criticism yet leveled at the UN on climate change, concluded not only that the UN's 2001 temperature reconstruction had used inappropriate statistical methods and data but also that many of the supporting scientific papers, both before and after the 2001 report, had been written by a small and closely connected group of palaeoclimatologists who effectively dominated their field worldwide and were all intimately linked to the principle author of the UN's 2001 graph.
The temperatures we're experiencing at the moment are not exceptional and that the medieval warm period was at least as warm as the present and probably up to 3 degrees C warmer.

There is nothing worse than mankind believing that we can control everything including the climate. These changes have happened many times since the Earth was created and I think we are a little naive to believe that if we stop driving cars or unplug mobile phone chargers the Earth will stop changing just for us...

aidan24326

Celticfire wrote:

There is nothing worse than mankind believing that we can control everything including the climate. These changes have happened many times since the Earth was created and I think we are a little naive to believe that if we stop driving cars or unplug mobile phone chargers the Earth will stop changing just for us...

Many researchers have pointed out that temperature changes and climate fluctuations are natural phenomena which were happening long before human technology and will be still around long after we're gone. It seems the effects that humans are having on climate change may have been greatly exaggerated. That's not to say that we can't do our bit to help, but as Celticfire has pointed out large-scale phenomena such as climate patterns or mean earth temperatures are above and beyond the scope of what we can readily influence. There are cosmic factors which significantly influence climate/earth temperature and are completely out of our control. Solar behaviour, earth's magnetic field, position of the solar system in galactic orbit etc. This is part of the reason that major climate changes seem to have a cyclical pattern when see over longer periods of time.

RtD

Nuclear has some other aspects to it that don't lend it well to the Irish scenario apart from the pollution and waste arguments.
Nuclear power plants have to be big to be economical and, despite Irelands high per capita energy usage, we don't have the demand to make it feasible. Building a big nuclear plant to power half the country is too much of an eggs in one basket scenario, there needs to be back-up in place should the reactor be shut down for repairs, regular servicing or otherwise. In larger countries shuting down one plant at a time isn't a big deal as it's only a small proportion of the demand.
Also, nuclear is one of the most expensive forms of electricity, wind power is cheaper currently when all factors are considered, and less poluting. The only problem is the predictability of supply.
Nuclear plants also have a long lead in time, if the possibility was looked at now it might be fully operational ten years from now. By that time other, more predictable, sources of renewable energy could have come to the fore, with great potential for wave power in Irelands case, along with power storage allied to wind farms.
Apart from small pockets of gas, Ireland as not been fortunate in it's energy yielding geology. However, geographically we are blessed. We have among the largest wind and wave resources in the world, leaving us in a prime position for the coming of age of renewables.

In terms of the thread title, do I think global warming is defeatable? Yes, as a race we will survive and come out the other side. That's not to say that there won't be many casualties, many countries could possibly be ravaged by it's effects, notably equatorial and low-lying nations.
The argument that it's just part of a natural cycle is, I'm afraid, ignorant in my view. No doubt the planet's temperature goes through cycles, history and ice cores tell us this, but to argue that we have not greatly exacerbated the heating up I feel is a case of foolish denial.

Glenbhoy

From what little i know on the subject, I don't think that man has a huge influence on global climate change, as Celticfire pointed out, man cannot control everything on the planet, nor can he predict. I mean ffs we can barely get a weather forecast for 2 days in the future correct without trying to predict climate change over the next few hundred years!!
As has been correctly pointed out, climate has constantly changed and not always gradually, there appears to be evidence pointing to many cataclysmic rapid changes. Do we believe that because we have tv's now, the earth has decided to settle down and maintain the status quo that we're used to?
We also have science's record of predictions, for example, in the 70's (apparently), there was evidence showing that another ice age was rapidly coming, this would be unavoidable, so we better wrap up!!
All that aside, I think from a purely economic view point, that it's time to get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels and work on the large scale production of the alternatives, we should start now, and work damned hard on it, we can gain a competitve advantage on being first in there, we can develop and export the technologies and the electricity, this is a chance for us as a nation to actually produce something.
The adoption of alternative energy technologies would ensure that we are cutting our carbon emmissions (well, no point in not hedging our bets, the scientists may be right!!), and get rid of our dependence on fossil fuels (which really leave us at the mercy of OPEC, and general instability in the middle east).
PS Celticfire, can you give me a link to that post by Junkyard?

bonkey

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

allow the earth to heal itself.

It always irks me when people refer to the problems associated with global warming in such terms.

Regardless of whether or not you subscribe to a Gaia theory, the notion of "healing" suggests that the earth is "damaged" or "injured". It isn't. Or, if it is, its damaged / injured in a tiny insignificant way compared to states its been in the past which were part of its natural lifecycle.

Tackling Global Warming isn't about making the earth feel better. Its about maintaining an environment conducive to supporting the human population as we know it, without necessitating massive changes in our lifestyle. Sure, there's some people who want to do it to save the whales or whatever, but you know what....for the vast majority of people, the only reason to save the whales from global warming is because the same thing that knocks them off will wreak havoc on mankind.

I feel bad that we wiped out species like the dodo for no significantly-important reason, but you know what....if the dodo was still around and thriving under Global Waarming and someone said that we shouldn't fight Global Warming because it could wipe out the dodo....I'd say let it die if its a choice between us and them. And if its a question over which species we give higher priority to, rather than wipe it out...I'm with picking mankind. Sorry to the dodo (were it not extinct), but thats just how it is.

Global Warming will not wipe out life on this planet. It won't even wipe out mankind. It will just cause enough havoc that our way of life will be irrevocably changed and that is why its a problem.

If people want to argue that its not manmade, or that our impact on it is tiny, just ask them whether or not that matters. If you can prevent your lifestyle from being majorly disrupted by accepting some minor changes, does it really matter what is behind the change in the first place?

If people want to argue that its not certain that its happening at all, thats fine too. Why take the risk.

Consider it like driving a car. Nowadays, when (responsible) people get behind the wheel of a car, they put on a seatbelt. Why? Its not because they want to crash the car. Its not because they intend to crash the car. Its certainly not because they're certain a crash will occur involving them. Its because a crash could happen and the minor inconvenience of wearing a seatbelt far outeights the major inconvenience of getting thrown through your front windscreen.

And yes, there's a chance that wearing the seatbelt will be a bad move - that you'll be that unlucky sod who gets in an accident and gets trapped by it rather than saved. Y'know what though...you're a fool if you think that you're playing the odds sensibly if you don't wear it for that reason.

Continuing the parallel, lets go back to whether or not we are the main cause of Global Warming. Just because you believe you are not going to cause an accident whilst driving doesn't mean you won't be involved in one that someone else causes. "I won't cause a crash, therefore I won't be in a crash" is as dumb a reason not to wear your seatbelt as they come.

Now sure...when mandatory seatbelts were introduced, people cried about the nanny state about as loudly as they did when the smoking ban was introduced. And yet suggest to someone today that wearing a seatbelt is a stupid idea and the vast majority will look at you as though you've lost it.

Can we stop global warming? Who knows., but who cares.
Are we responsible for global warming? Probably, but who cares.
Is global warming happening? Almost certainly, but who cares.

The real question is what intelligent reason do we have to not wear a seatbelt.

loismustdie

bonkey, that is the best analogy i've heard, well done:) true, so true

bonkey

I have to be honest....I nicked it from somewhere. Can't remember where....possibly someone on slashdot.

Gurgle

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote:

I heard fusion's roughly 60 years off -

Lol, I think thats professor-speak for 'I've no idea but some of my students are pretty smart'

Practical fusion could be achieved next week, in 5 years, 10 or 300.

bonkey wrote:

The real question is what intelligent reason do we have to not wear a seatbelt.

Its a nice analogy, but somewhat incomplete.

The saving the environment equivalent of wearing a seatbelt would require us to live in a minimum-energy environment.

That means everybody walking/cycling to work if its at all feasible, public transport or the most efficient car possible otherwise.
No weekend breaks to european cities, central heating only used in very cold weather - wear more clothes when its just a bit chilly.

tbh, installing a ground-source heat pump to save the environment when you've got a 3.5 litre Landrover in your drive is just laughable.

Red Hand

I've heard somewhere that reducing the amount of solar energy reaching the earth's surface by pumping the upper atmosphere full of dust could knock down the temperature down. There was case of some volcano that erupted in the 18th or 19th centuary which caused "the year without summer" where there was snow in July in England.

Naval guns could have the right force to dump the dust into the upper atmosphere so as to scintillate the light. But that would only be a small part of combatting rising temperatures.

elivsvonchiaing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle

I saw this program and was a bit skeptical. What I feel was ommitted was the impact of changes in the Earth's magnetic field on climate change.

This was not an even handed program - but I still believe that this whole global warming debate HAS been politically hijacked!

It will grow colder in as little as 5 years I believe; our sun produces roughly 5 million tonnes of mass-defect per second - how it gets here is little understood - this constant will change only over millions of years.

From the core it has to go through a complex process of convection before it emerges as visible light (which we don't even partially understand). Its impact is then further compomised by our own magnetosphere.

I state this on no concrete evidence whatsoever!

We are told to not fly - be green - etc. etc. based upon very dubious evidence? my evidence is as good as theirs I think...

It is this: if they assertions were true - I and we would not be here...

Current levels of CO2 are nothing what the Earth has seen - nor the temperatures they are supposed to provoke - explore above links - i'm unwilling to feed pop-corn in this arguement!

The program (while flawed) did convince me this is no longer a scientific issue - but a political one - i.e. we will build nuclear power stations - and they'll love us for protecting their children's(potentially) cancer-riddled future :eek:


I really don't believe in cheap google links and this is absolutely not an ad for wikipedia ...

This program should be available on the internet IMHO in its full-length form.

Nuff said?