- There has always been a lot of junk "science" with global warming claims. I will not cite chapter and verse, because I've studied it for years, and wouldn't know where to start. But the point I'm making is, junk science makes me suspicious of the claims the junk science makes.
What are you trying to say here? Are you inferring the all science is junk science? If not, what is junk science? How do you identify it?
- The earth has always gone through natural warming and cooling cycles. What the hell do you think ice ages were? Global cooling. What the hell do you think the retreat of ice ages were? Global warming. You can't get any more no-brainer than that.
What you are claiming here is that the climate changed in the past due to various natural causes, which is true. It does not mean that the change that is happening now is natural. Just because it has happened naturally in the past doesn't automatically mean it can't be induced by human behavior.
- There is now a huge amount of blatant hysterical lies and propaganda being pumped into the zeitgeist by the major tv news stations on "global warming." I can't count the number of "documentaries" I've seen the past few weeks by either CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, etc. showing some poor island off in the pacific somewhere (Maldives?), or showing some island off of Bangladesh which is now being threatened by rising sea levels. The claims aren't that rising sea levels will affect these places in the future. The claim is, THE RISING SEA LEVELS ARE AFFECTING THESE PLACES RIGHT NOW! But the undisputed fact is, THERE IS NO MEASURABLE INCREASE IN SEA LEVEL AT THE MOMENT! When I see blatant lies and propaganda, being backed by big money (there has to be big money involved in such a media full-court press), again I get suspicious.
Hm. So this is wrong? Point out how - educate us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
- Corporations have an interest in polluting, and have an interest in denying global warming (whether it is true or false) and their involvement in it. Corporations don't care about the planet, or me and you. They care about one thing, and only one thing: their profits.
Well, the CEOs of companies in canada and the US actually care about shareholder return, because they are legally required to. Many of them are 'going green' to promote their image with the general public. I've met a few of these guys: High level staff at Maxtor and NBC (long story), interestingly enough they actually did care, and were convinced that sustainable behavior was actually more profitable.
- Some powerful corporations, and Wall Street investment banks (Goldman Saks), have the opposite interest. Their interest is in the world believing in global warming (whether it truly exists or not), because they stand to make big bucks trading carbon credits, etc.
Interestingly enough, they can also make a ton of money off of oil, coal, and other 'dirty' businesses. Banks are opportunists, and will make money in any way they can. Besides, whether or not they are pushing for global warming has no real bearing on the realness of GW.
- I am reserved in my claim here, because of the hiddeous amount of junk science and lies out there, but the earth at this point does seem to be warming. Glaciers seem to be in retreat everywhere, the polar ice caps seem to be shrinking, etc. Could be lies, or selective showing of photographs and evidence, but at this point I believe it unless its proven wrong.
Check out cryosphere today. It's a picture of the artic for every day since the early 80's. You can watch the entire sequence from 1980 until now. In 2002 or so, it get very interesting.
- The wholesale digging up of millions of years old remains of dead prehistoric plant material (coal and oil) and burning it all to get energy is just a bad idea. It does pollute. It does use up oxygen and pump God knows how much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It's just something that isn't smart, and it's just something I'd rather not do.
It's not an unknown amount. You can calculate it. The data is available. Look up the number of barrels of oil extracted, look up the amount of carbon dioxide generated by burning the barrel. Do the same for coal. It amount to about a 1% increase in atmospheric CO2 per year. The oxygen used up isn't as significant, because CO2 is about 3% of our total atmosphere.
My conclusions are that there are lies and junk science and propaganda that global warming is occuring and is manmade, but ironically, it might actually be occurring despite the lies and propaganda, and either way digging up and burning all this stuff just isn't good. There are liars and interests and big money on both sides that want me to believe one way or the other. Nothing good will come out of these global warming conferences, because it is all being done for the benefit of big money and big corporations. I think we should stop burning all this stuff we dig up out of the earth's crust. I was for nuclear decades ago, and still am. I think it would have solved a lot of our problems. Unfortunately, the idiot liberals opposed it, and thus shot themselves and everyone else in the foot.
It seems clear cut to me that our actions are doing something. To decide, as a physics-educated person, I computed the amount carbon we were digging up and burning. It's an easy calculation to do, and the data is all over the web. It turns out that we are putting a lot up there - quite an amazing amount actually. Did you know 1 gallon of gasoline generates about 19 lbs of CO2? That doesn't include the CO2 generated in the extraction and refinement process.
IMO, our future isn't nuclear, but solar. Mostly direct solar. With a few plants in the arid areas of the world, you can easily generate all the power we'll ever need - even if we all started driving electric cars.
If you assume the average of 300 watts per square meter, and the best photovoltaics right now being about 40% efficient, you get about 120 watts per sq meter. The world uses about 16.8 trillion kw-h of electricity in 2005, and there are 8500 or so hours in a year, so that's about 2 billion watts on average - probably is a good estimate of the peak usage too because when USA is sleeping and using low power, the EU is daytime and using heavy power. At 120 W generated per sq meter, you can supply the world's demand for 2 billion watts with abour 16 million sq meters. That is a single solar power plant, 4 km square. Pretty tiny. Just for kicks, you'd build a few dozen of these around the world for redundancy and future scalability. Once they're built, no more emissions will be needed. It's sustainable - as long as there is sun there is power.
In space, it gets better, we get about 1200 w per sq meter up there. I think Japan is putting a solar power station up there now...
