Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Beskargam on January 30, 2011, 10:25:32 pm
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Writing a paper on climate change and i have to find the bias for the theory that climate change is caused by both natural factors and human ones. Would you ladies and gents happen to know off the top of your head or be able to point me in the right direction?
additionaly open to discussion on climate change in general
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the climate is not changing that is a lie made up by libruls tryin to keep me from driving my hummer to the end of the driveway to get my mail every day
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uh-huh. thats the other theory i have to write about
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Beware the..
G-R-E-E-N
D-R-A-G-O-N
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(http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/HoloceneOptimumTemperature.jpg)
The caused by human factors... ehrm... Just watch Al Gore?
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(http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/HoloceneOptimumTemperature.jpg)
The caused by human factors... ehrm... Just watch Al Gore?
well, he zoomed in on just that recent upturn, and assumed exponential growth. People always manipulate graphs to prove their point if they're trying to prove a point.
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Charts are awesome. So much easier than crafting arguments and discussion.
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I've recently been reading the Geological Society of London's statement on climate change: Climate change: evidence from the geological record (http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/climatechange).
The statement concludes that it is not possible to relate the global warming trend of the last 40 years to geological causes, and that there are several lines of evidence that point to an increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions accompanying this recent warming. Evidence of a sudden global warming event 55 million years ago at the end of the Paleocene epoch (and other earlier events) provides a basis for the amount of atmospheric carbon from natural sources that would have been responsible for such an increase in global temperature. If a projection of current anthropogenic carbon emissions is made into the next few centuries, then the total amount of atmospheric carbon could approach that of the 55 million year event. The warming induced by this may trigger the release of carbon from natural reservoirs like frozen methane gas hydrates under the ocean, wetlands and other natural sources - like a positive feedback mechanism, some of this carbon could also contribute to the rise in the global temperature. Together with the human-induced emissions it could raise it by at least 5-6ºC or more.
You are searching for the bias for the theory that both natural and human factors are responsible for climate change, so the statement may be of use to you as it suggests that there could be a link between the two. At least, that's what I'm getting from it.
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the best argument for bias towards global warming can be evidenced in this very thread, look at the reaction you get from suggesting it, and this is just in a little gamer forum, imagine what asking that question would get you if you worked in a place that was founded with anthropogenic co2 caused global warming. that said, they wouldn't have founded such a place if they didn't think there was a good reason to.
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mention the frog metaphor :)
(I.e. if you raise temperature in a cooking pot slowly enough a frog won't notice he is getting cooked until its too late for him to move out. lol)
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(http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/HoloceneOptimumTemperature.jpg)
The caused by human factors... ehrm... Just watch Al Gore?
well, he zoomed in on just that recent upturn, and assumed exponential growth. People always manipulate graphs to prove their point if they're trying to prove a point.
It's almost if... almost like this completely ignores the timescale because it is like... mixing geological timescale with historic...
Like... it's almost as someone who posts this graph kinda misses the point about speed and only looks at temperature..
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Even if global warming is bullcrap, we're running out of oil and I don't wanna keep breathing that **** in. :ick:
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I wish more people would focus on that issue, rather than the global warming, because that truly is irrefutable, there is no denying that there is a limited amount of oil, and everyone knows that car exhaust is nasty. more importantly, more efficient vehicles mean more profitable vehicles for who ever is driving them.
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Even if global warming is bullcrap, we're running out of oil and I don't wanna keep breathing that **** in. :ick:
Good point. People seem to miss that.
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Even if global warming is bullcrap, we're running out of oil and I don't wanna keep breathing that **** in. :ick:
Good point. People seem to miss that.
Agreed. IMHO, it doesn't matter WHY the icecaps are melting, or why climate is changing. The fact of the matter is, it IS changing and what are we going to do about it. Getting hung up on who/what is to blame is a complete waste of time
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Even if global warming is bullcrap, we're running out of oil and I don't wanna keep breathing that **** in. :ick:
Good point. People seem to miss that.
Agreed. IMHO, it doesn't matter WHY the icecaps are melting, or why climate is changing. The fact of the matter is, it IS changing and what are we going to do about it. Getting hung up on who/what is to blame is a complete waste of time
I was more onto the matter of our dwindling energy supplies. But yeah, that too.
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The thing about science is it's not there to oblige moral misgivings or ease guilty consciences, it's there to explain why **** happens, what **** happens, and how **** happens, then go on to make predictions about what **** happens next.
It's up to everyone else to sort out the practicalities.
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Agreed. IMHO, it doesn't matter WHY the icecaps are melting, or why climate is changing. The fact of the matter is, it IS changing and what are we going to do about it. Getting hung up on who/what is to blame is a complete waste of time
Actually, it does matter. If we know what's causing it, we can potentially exert some control over it.
Would you have suggested the same approach with the Ozone hole?
Would you continue to use asbestos?
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Agreed. IMHO, it doesn't matter WHY the icecaps are melting, or why climate is changing. The fact of the matter is, it IS changing and what are we going to do about it. Getting hung up on who/what is to blame is a complete waste of time
Actually, it does matter. If we know what's causing it, we can potentially exert some control over it.
Would you have suggested the same approach with the Ozone hole?
Would you continue to use asbestos?
Point taken. I still find this argument over whether its natural or manmade annoying though, because often the people who say its natural also propose no plan to save the dozens of cities that will sink.
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The chain of argument goes something along the lines of:
<insert fallacious argument that it's not man made here> -> it's natural -> natural is good -> business as usual -> continue the rape and pillage
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People who say it's natural, or don't believe in the concept at all, should be made to live in micronesia.
And yea. As much as Joshua likes his graph; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RYBDTnS7dg
I think that video pwns it :P
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what will be really scary is if we keep producing enough greenhouse gases to trigger the methane hydrates. i think thatll be pretty close to, if not the point of no return. and ya it really doesnt matter if its natural or not, **** is still gona happen. question is what are we gona do about it. at least i wont be around for the oncoming ice age.
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The permafrost is already verging on the boundary of 'defrost' that is self-sustaining due to methane release :<
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oh goodie. thats bad. reall bad. so is that acclerating us towards the next ice age or is that gona massively disrupt the natural cycle?
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Well it sort of depends on events we probably don't even understand yet.
The Earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for more than 11,000 years. It was conventional wisdom that "the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years," but this has been called into question recently. For example, an article in Nature[34] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years. Predicted changes in orbital forcing suggest that the next glacial period would begin at least 50,000 years from now, even in absence of human-made global warming[35] (see Milankovitch cycles). Moreover, anthropogenic forcing from increased greenhouse gases might outweigh orbital forcing for as long as intensive use of fossil fuels continues.[36] At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (December 17, 2008), scientists detailed evidence in support of the controversial idea that the introduction of large-scale rice agriculture in Asia, coupled with extensive deforestation in Europe began to alter world climate by pumping significant amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the last 1,000 years. In turn, a warmer atmosphere heated the oceans making them much less efficient storehouses of carbon dioxide and reinforcing global warming, possibly forestalling the onset of a new glacial age.[37]
Taken outta the wiki on ice ages.
The problem is, although we're doing a lot better on predicting things, there's just too many variables (we are too stupid), for us to handle reliably on anything other than almost-immediate weather right now.
We can give probabilities that things will happen, but even if we're 99% sure, we're not ever gonna be 100% sure.
It does seem fairly likely that if we end up in a long-arse interglacial we're really going to have to rethink the way we- wait we have to do that anyway.
But a lot of people are going to have to move, most of london, tokyo, the netherlands in general, the oceanic nations, sydney, even my city, which is built on a series of hills, is likely to loose real-estate to sea level rises that are GOING to happen, and we are making happen faster.
I vaguely recall the last ice age being (most responcibly) caused by a huge amount of non-saline water from the great lakes being dumped into the atlantic, or something similar, well,
The Western Antarctic Shelf is resting on a bed of land, that basically seems to allow water to sandwich in between, this water causes warming in the ice underneath the sheet, which with just a 6 degree (from initial formation conditions, which, btw was 4-5 degrees ago, so, UNDER the UN 'target' temperatures that we're 'failing' to meet), will break off completely and plunge into the ocean, at which point it will drift from the continent and melt, massively increasing sea level.
*Info from the Royal Society via the antarctic observation missions(sourceinbbchorizon).
So uhh..... Yea.
Edit;
This is why the island nations are jumping up and down about their entire countries disappearing, and being completely sidelined by people like america, india and china.
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Also, I should qualify that a bit, ice ages are generally accepted to be caused by positive feedback events, such as; ice forming, which reflects more solar energy, which means less is absorbed by the planet, which means it gets colder, which means more ice forms, etc, atmospheric changes (generally accepted to be mainly driven by plant and animal life (eg; during interglacials plant life esplodes, and thus co2 is normally reduced to tiny levels, which means less green house effect (*though lots of water vapour at such times mean it's a gradual process as that water vapour is slowly converted through the water cycle into ice at the poles), Methane being trapped by biomass, especially trapped permanently by biomass that has died in swampy areas which then freeze over, and so on and so forth.
Other events are those such as effecting both water flow and ability to absorb solar energy (in various forms), orbital positions (distance, the eccentricity of earths orbit), supervolcanos, and asteroidal impact (you can probably throw nuclear winter in there as well should it ever happen).
I think I missed some.
The thing I drudged up from my memories, even if it's not old info, I imagine would be the preverbial straw.
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hmm i thought we were in year 18,000 of the holocene. and several of my sources when i was web hunting info said that interglaciels usualy lasted about 20k years.
"I vaguely recall the last ice age being (most responcibly) caused by a huge amount of non-saline water from the great lakes being dumped into the atlantic, or something similar, well,"
the big great lakey thing was in the smack middle of northern us and candad and covered a lot of the landmass.
other eventts = volcanic eruptions 2. :)
whoops u already said that
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what will be really scary is if we keep producing enough greenhouse gases to trigger the methane hydrates. i think thatll be pretty close to, if not the point of no return. and ya it really doesnt matter if its natural or not, **** is still gona happen. question is what are we gona do about it. at least i wont be around for the oncoming ice age.
Although I firmly believe that there is a significant warming occurring and that the climate is changing (in front of my eyes in fact) the methane issue has received an interesting twist recently. The oil platform disaster in the gulf has revealed that despite a massive amount of methane that should have been released from under the ocean floor... almost none of it ever reached the surface. Apparently some tiny organisms think methane is like Thanksgiving dinner.
Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
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BEWARE THE HOLOCENE HAS ENDED AND THE EVERLASTING FREEZE HAS BEGUN!!
we have a 3 day ice storm comin thru. school better be closed
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Although I firmly believe that there is a significant warming occurring and that the climate is changing (in front of my eyes in fact) the methane issue has received an interesting twist recently. The oil platform disaster in the gulf has revealed that despite a massive amount of methane that should have been released from under the ocean floor... almost none of it ever reached the surface. Apparently some tiny organisms think methane is like Thanksgiving dinner.
huh didnt know that. do you know what the organisms are by chance? that would be good for paper.
not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
not so haha! we must build all bamboo villages to survive!
http://www.coast.net/stories/philippines-designing-defence-against-climate-change-ips-i
and school is indeed closed
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Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
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Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
Uhm... You do realize that the question isn't whether we are causing climate change or not, but rather HOW ARE WE GOING TO GO ON?
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This planet will still exist if there's a supernova a few dozen light years off, or if we have a nuclear apocalypse. In fact, there will probably still be life.
Just not us.
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Well, some natural factors that can be attributed to global warming are water vapour and methane from cows and rice.
Of course, as the earth warms because of manmade activity, more water evaporates and further increases the rate of global warming. So water vapour causing global warming is also our fault. And the cows and rice are our fault as well. Factory farms aren't really natural.
And once the permafrost melts in Manitoba, there willl be a lot more methane in the atmosphere too. And as the polar ice caps recede, more sunlight will be absorbed, further warming the planet. And we keep driving cars and burning fossil fuels, so that's putting more CO2 into the atmosphere.
I think the deadliest thing about anthropogenic global warming is that it's happening very fast, so nature can't adapt. Species go extinct, and biodiversity drops. Without biodiversity you get problems like pests and disease. Like dutch elm disease and the pine beetle, potato blight.
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I personally can't wait for global warming to kick in. In fact I hope it gets as bad as Gore said it would. Its about time for a cataclysm to advance our species.
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Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
Uhm... You do realize that the question isn't whether we are causing climate change or not, but rather HOW ARE WE GOING TO GO ON?
By planning ahead? Seems like a good method to me :)
Thinking about it more... let's apply some project management here. We can categorize our risks, resources, major show stoppers and budget and move forward.
At this point it doesn't matter what the short term plans are...
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Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
Uhm... You do realize that the question isn't whether we are causing climate change or not, but rather HOW ARE WE GOING TO GO ON?
By planning ahead? Seems like a good method to me :)
Thinking about it more... let's apply some project management here. We can categorize our risks, resources, major show stoppers and budget and move forward.
At this point it doesn't matter what the short term plans are...
Wouldn't planning ahead involve avoiding the problem altogether?
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But planning ahead might keep an oil exec from buying another yacht. So we can't have that. :p
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wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
We discussed people like you on page 1.
Sure, the earth has seen worse, sure the earth will still be here after we've made it unsuitable for human existance.
Isn't that a bit BESIDES the point though?
:rolleyes:
Well, some natural factors that can be attributed to global warming are water vapour and methane from cows and rice.
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1.3Billion cows, 700 million tonnes of rice, and then the rest of your post, plus more since we tear up the natural environment and damage most of the checks and balances.
IceFire raises an interesting point, but those organisms are sea dwelling and probably wouldn't help with atmospheric based methane anywhere near as effectively, it'd be valuable to see if we could harness that (bacteria I assume?) entities ability to consume it in some way.
In terms of action plans we're actually really screwed unless we turn to advanced technologies, and green technologies too.
Why?
Well, we are going to be steadily losing landmass to the oceans over the next few hundred years, our population is already at a point where if _everyone_ on the planet, ate at the level of any westerner (americans are /by far/ the worst, british next, then germany/france/the netherlands, then the poorer european nations), we simply wouldn't have enough food for everyone.
If everyone ate at the level of your average indian (that's less than HALF what the average american eats a day, and two thirds of the average brit's consumption), then we could just about swing it right now, if we killed population growth completely.
The problem is, as I mentioned, losing land mass, and population growth, well, we've already used something close to 99% of all arable land on the planet, most of which (the vast majority) is coastal, or near tidal rivers, if you look things over via satellite we are _at_ capacity in terms of farmland, and what's worse is the food stocks in the ocean are being over-sourced, they will eventually collapse on current level of consumption.
So we need to sort out food, more than anything else.
Water goes with that (drinking).
We also need to sort out energy.
Climate management (in terms of biodiversity and life cycle) are also pretty important to properly sort out.
Flood defences.
Desertification defences(because, even though it's natural, and even though it'll happen if we do nothing, we're likely to eventually lose the entire southern hemisphere to the spread of the Sahara).
Population growth.
I'm sure I forgot some major ones.
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population growth. . . nuke china?
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Nuke everything... except Europe, we're dying out anyway.
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Well, Nuke would nuke everything. :p
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We discussed people like you on page 1.
That would imply dialogue. We really had a monologue if anything. If you want to actually have a discussion with him, it'd be good to start now.
1.3Billion cows, 700 million tonnes of rice, and then the rest of your post, plus more since we tear up the natural environment and damage most of the checks and balances.
Uh, I think the point of the rest of his post was that it's not natural. And if we're really honest, it's not the cows we need to go after as a major source first, but the goats. Then we work on the cows.
The goats are unpopular to mention because they're the preferred method in the third world, requiring less upkeep and open space than cows, but they're actually much worse.
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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100916/full/news.2010.475.html
"We just don't know enough," he adds. "You can take an organism into the lab and do a respiration study, but it's hard to take the lab to a kilometre deep in the ocean and do respiration studies and controlled experiments."
I think that line sums up the problems with figuring out what is responsible for global warming, too... you can do all the experiments you want in a lab, under an environment controlled by you, however, there is no guarantee that in nature some process you know nothing about (or that relates in a way you don't know with your little experiment) won't interfere with your predicted results when those circumstances happen in the wild.
As for the name of the bacteria:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129475847
FLATOW: Thank you. I'm always bad at that, as you know. Tell us about, say, your article - you - tell us about this new - these new bacteria, and they're not just one species, but a whole bunch of them that you've been finding out there.
Dr. HAZEN: Yeah. So what we did was to do some molecular techniques, looking at the RNA, DNA, proteins and lipids and show what the community structure was in this deep-sea plume that we saw, and then what - compare that to what we saw outside of that plume.
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We discussed people like you on page 1.
That would imply dialogue. We really had a monologue if anything. If you want to actually have a discussion with him, it'd be good to start now.
1.3Billion cows, 700 million tonnes of rice, and then the rest of your post, plus more since we tear up the natural environment and damage most of the checks and balances.
Uh, I think the point of the rest of his post was that it's not natural. And if we're really honest, it's not the cows we need to go after as a major source first, but the goats. Then we work on the cows.
The goats are unpopular to mention because they're the preferred method in the third world, requiring less upkeep and open space than cows, but they're actually much worse.
I know you get a boner the moment you think you can get one up on me.
But I was agreeing with him.
And, More cows than goats(goats+sheep) in the world by the sum of what, 300million? probably more by now.
Sure, goats are worse, but lets be honest, it doesn't /really/ matter what "farm" animal you pick, if it's food for us and it can be raised in numbers, we cultivate it to support us.
The big exception to that is the oceans. Based on current numbers it's quite possible we'll be out of commercially viable fishing spots in 50 years, because we're simply not doing enough to let fish stocks recover.
As for the other thing, I think my distaste for people who think it's fine cuz the planet is gonna cope. Cuz, lets face it, after all the facts and info presented about our effects on the environment and ecosystem, if someone isn't convinced by now, it's because they simply don't want to be, and probably never will be.
Although I'm quite fond of animal life, I'm more concerned with our civilisation, and it's survival, if we go on the way we are, we are slowly sinking chances of genuinely making sustainable lives for everyone.
The earlier we start really taking these things seriously, on a global level (from the average joe to the global banker, the festival reveller to the people in power), the better off we will be once all the oil is actually gone, once the food stocks have completely maxed out their efficiency and wont ever produce more.
Why? Because it's much easier to build new infrastructure when you have a support system to do it, and the most vital one we have at the moment, is oil. Once that's gone, everything will be so much more painful to move foreward with, and many things will have to be given up completely.
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Could everyone indulging in personal attacks whose name is not Battuta please stop
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iamzack made an excellent point
What are we going to do about it?
Yes, humans are NOT the center of the universe, but does that mean we should just give up and let climate change drown thousands of us? It is our responsibility to continue the existence of our species, whether we're the center of the universe or not doesn't come into it. To paraphrase an excellent line from a show
I don't care if we wake up when all the suns have burnt out and the universe is winding down to die... so long as we're there to see it.
Climate change will affect us, natural or not. Whats the plan? Because we need one.
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I thought the plan was to cut down on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions to try and at least reduce how fast things heat up. AFAICT the most feasible way to do that would be to build more nuclear plants or something other than coal-burning plants. But apparently no one wanted to do either of those things, so I don't know what the **** is going on anymore. :doubt:
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Capitalism
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Capitalism
All hail
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Nobody wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. We still deal with radioactive material by burying it.
We should invest in finding more efficient alloys to store hydrogen in so we can power everything with it instead. :|
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Interesting stuff. The Earth has quite a few checks and balances... although we push the limits far too often the planet and indeed much of the life will continue to survive. Probably thrive. No matter what we do. Which is good news... so the thing we really need to focus on is our survival. Methane release or not... the climate is changing and it will change "rapidly" over the next few hundred years thanks to what we've been doing for the last few hundred years/or not. It doesn't really matter. We have to be prepared and plan ahead... not too many organizations seem to be doing that.
wha...? it's almost like the planet has been around a fair while and endured **** far scarier than us or something, but that cannot be, for we are little god people, we HAVE to be special in some way.
Uhm... You do realize that the question isn't whether we are causing climate change or not, but rather HOW ARE WE GOING TO GO ON?
By planning ahead? Seems like a good method to me :)
Thinking about it more... let's apply some project management here. We can categorize our risks, resources, major show stoppers and budget and move forward.
At this point it doesn't matter what the short term plans are...
Wouldn't planning ahead involve avoiding the problem altogether?
Well everything I've read recently suggests that we've already set things in motion. The 300 years of industrial revolution and pumping whatever we wanted into the atmosphere for that period of time is starting to have an effect. Or we can go with the "it's naturally happening" people. Either way the climate IS changing and that has consequences and it will shift what has worked for us for the last few hundred years around. Recently I've less seen it as saving the planet (planet will survive ultimately) and more about saving ourselves.
So rather than avoidance (which I don't think is possible at this point - I used to think so but not recently) it's about mitigation. If we can I'd love to see the old camping adage: Leave the camp site cleaner than when you found it.
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Capitalism
:lol:
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Nobody wants a nuclear power plant in their backyard. We still deal with radioactive material by burying it.
We should invest in finding more efficient alloys to store hydrogen in so we can power everything with it instead. :|
Not a traditional nuclear plant anyways. There are other ways to do nuclear... including some very interesting efforts to create small self contained nuclear units that would power smaller cities. Also I think China and the US and a few others are investing in... was it Boron? I can't remember. Anyways in a different type of nuclear fuel that leaves very little in the way of radioactivity behind. It's an old thing rather than a new thing but at the time everyone went with uranium and plutonium because it was useful in making weapons. Since that isn't the focus anymore... new methods are coming.
To solve our energy needs we need:
1) Better nuclear
2) Maintain our hydro
3) Use tidal, wind geothermal and solar where appropriate (i.e. the giant solar project in the Sahara desert for instance)
4) A smarter power grid that is better able to manage where the power needs to be rather than loosing it all through inefficiencies
5) More efficient devices/appliances/etc. There's a lot of wasted energy that doesn't need to be wasted.
If I were to add a 6...
6) Re think our society a little bit. We're all so caught up with needing to drive and go everywhere all the time. The traditional office is required for some professions but maybe we need a rethink there. Either we need to be closer to our jobs or our jobs need to be virtualized where it is practical to do so.
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No, we can't do that because then the top petroleum execs might not be able to afford their second yacht.
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lol, second yacht? oh, you mean second solid gold yacht. gotcha.
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Helium-3 Helium-3 fusion FTW
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...hydrogen...
And where will you get the hydrogen from?
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...hydrogen...
And where will you get the hydrogen from?
There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.
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1. advanced nuclear reactors (capable of burning thorium, current nuclear waste, and our uranium resources will last for thousands of years with them)
2. Solar concentrator plants (mechanical, not photovoltaics) - the most promising alternative energy source
3. energy storage and car fuel using hydrogen and this - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351341/Relief-pumps-Revolutionary-hydrogen-fuel-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html
Problem solved. :)
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There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.
But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.
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There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.
But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.
okay now that i think about it you are totally correct
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...hydrogen...
And where will you get the hydrogen from?
Its only the most abundant element in the universe. :|
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...hydrogen...
And where will you get the hydrogen from?
Its only the most abundant element in the universe. :|
Yeah but he's right, getting to molecular hydrogen on Earth isn't very energy-efficient.
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We'll tear it off the water molecules with our teeth.
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Sodium + water? Not sure of the efficiency of that though.
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Hydrogen separation is a very expensive process in terms of used energy. Not a lot of people know this, and the question goes why?
When thinking about fossilized fuels and their replacements in the cars, the oil is, at the moment, still the most efficient way to deliver energy from the engineering point of view. Replacing gasoline with ethanol is an interesting question, since the amount of energy within the the fuel is greater in gasoline, and in order to do the same amount of work, more ethanol has to be burned, negating the effect. Should the motors be optimized for ethanol, I'm not sure what would happen. In principle, the energy density is less which should dictate unless the combustion efficiency can be radically improved when using ethanol.
I actually don't think that electrical cars will make a breakthrough, unless the car is needed for transportation inside the city. Elsewhere it is not feasible with the current battery technology.
Hydrogen cells might work best, but the problem is the volatility of the hydrogen, and for that reason they need to be tied to some other material that adds considerably in the weight. I think that the future will likely be in the direction of hydrogen, once the separation issues and safety has been solved at some level.
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Hydrogen is actually more safe than gas if the storage tank is accidentally ingnited for example during vehicle collision. The problem is that pure hydrogen is a very small molecule that leaks thru almost any material over time, especially when compressed to make storage efficient in terms of density.
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Not to mention the overriding fact that there are no great hydrogen traps beneath Alaska or the Mid-East.
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Tidal power is another promising route, assuming we can find an efficient way to harvest it.
Tides in the Bay of Fundy reach heights of 50 feet in some places, and they are theorized to have enough energy to power all of North America for a year if harnessed for a day. Question being how.
Oil is efficient yes, but it's only efficient because a lot of engineering work has been put into making products optimized for it. Given enough work, we can get clean, sustainable energy from elsewhere.
But there might be fewer gold yachts. Or rather they'll belong to green power execs, and the oil execs cant let OTHER people have yachts, so they lobby hard against it :P
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Hydrogen is expensive to make? What! I made hydrogen myself with a 9V battery and some salt water! :X
/me looks into the numbers
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Hydrogen is expensive to make? What! I made hydrogen myself with a 9V battery and some salt water! :X
/me looks into the numbers
Energy in vs energy out is where it breaks down, I believe.
Also you can just type
/me gonna school you on the use of me (quote for schooling)
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NUMBERS
2 H2O(l) –> O2 (g) + 4 H+ (aq) + 4 electrons
2 H+ (aq) + 2 electrons –> H2 (g)
2 Faradays or ~193000 coulombs of electrons used per 1 mole of H2 produced. Yeah, that's not too great. :X
Edit:
/me fails to understand how he was schooled when you used the same tag as he did. :P
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What really grinds my gears is how oil companies fight alternative energy sources tooth and nail rather than try to adapt to changing demand. If your company can't adapt to the times then it deserves to fail and die by the free market you so dearly love. Do any auto companies weep for the stagecoach builders and saddle makers they put out of business? :p
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Oil is efficient yes, but it's only efficient because a lot of engineering work has been put into making products optimized for it. Given enough work, we can get clean, sustainable energy from elsewhere.
I mentioned oil because I think a lot of environmentally aware people somehow consider it "old tech" or stupid, but from engineering perspective neither of that is true. It is still the most reasonable way to transport energy on location if electrical wires fail, or to provide means of transportation, discounting naval nuclear reactors. This graph (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Energy_density.svg) shows some pre-selected materials and their energy densities. So it is not only the engineering work, but the energy density fossilized fuels have is a huge advantage that is very difficult to catch up.
There are some interesting engineering ideas of replacing helicopters with zeppelins in order to reduce the amount of fuel burned, but it is hard to see a source of energy that could replace fossilized fuel in cars and trucks that travel longer distances. Although, a zeppelin could carry the equivalent load of a truck with comparable speeds to the location. The question is, how much does zeppelin require energy to move from place A to B and what sort of fuel did it use? Gasoline burning passenger airliners are much more difficult to replace.
And as if replacing fuel itself wasn't difficult due to energy densities involved, there also has to be a sustainable method of producing that energy for large markets. Hydrogen is a byproduct of certain step in aluminum industry, though I'm not sure of the capacities, and likely the hydrogen released there is already being used.
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/me fails to understand how he was schooled when you used the same tag as he did. :P
Oh that's weird, the forum software autoconverts it. But you can just type
/ me (does whatever)
without the space between / and me.
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I actually don't think that electrical cars will make a breakthrough, unless the car is needed for transportation inside the city. Elsewhere it is not feasible with the current battery technology.
Although we're both reading into the future I have no reason to believe that we will stay at the current level of battery technology. It's fantastic that electric cars are coming on market (we now have the Volt and Leaf with the electric Focus coming soon after and a bunch of other mainstream electric vehicles in other countries as well) because it means that the technology will begin to be refined and current methods will be superceded by more sophisticated methods. We're entering a convergence zone between cars, computers, smart phones and other electric devices. All of them need better batteries and power efficiency... there are enough people out there doing the research on all of the different areas that we need to succeed here.
I'm fairly confident that someone will figure something out that works well... and I'm pretty certain that we'll have very normal and high performing cars that can drive 500km on a single charge. I'm not convinced it's impossible. Right now it is... well not quite... it's doable but with massive expense and compromises. But we're not staying in a single place right now which is encouraging. Ten years ago there was no Google, no smart phone, laptops lasted 2 hours on a charge and most cars weren't as good on fuel as they are now. Ten years from now? Fifty years from now? I think I'll live to see electric cars take over... or hydrogen/electric cars... or whatever :)
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Although we're both reading into the future I have no reason to believe that we will stay at the current level of battery technology. It's fantastic that electric cars are coming on market (we now have the Volt and Leaf with the electric Focus coming soon after and a bunch of other mainstream electric vehicles in other countries as well) because it means that the technology will begin to be refined and current methods will be superceded by more sophisticated methods. We're entering a convergence zone between cars, computers, smart phones and other electric devices. All of them need better batteries and power efficiency... there are enough people out there doing the research on all of the different areas that we need to succeed here.
I'm fairly confident that someone will figure something out that works well... and I'm pretty certain that we'll have very normal and high performing cars that can drive 500km on a single charge. I'm not convinced it's impossible. Right now it is... well not quite... it's doable but with massive expense and compromises. But we're not staying in a single place right now which is encouraging. Ten years ago there was no Google, no smart phone, laptops lasted 2 hours on a charge and most cars weren't as good on fuel as they are now. Ten years from now? Fifty years from now? I think I'll live to see electric cars take over... or hydrogen/electric cars... or whatever
There has been a considerably longer time for battery industry to develop than people usually count (10 to 20 years) for some reason. There has been a quite a lot of research and engineering work done there to improve the efficiencies earlier, and to my eyes it looks like a rough road ahead. The reason simply is the poor energy density of the lithium ion battery as shown in the graph, besides the older better performing batteries (as in military submarine type batteries) tended to be rather poisonous and have been outlawed by RoHS-type regulations. I'm personally of the opinion that the fuel cell will be the more reasonable replacement for a transportation energy source.
At the moment, I don't think it would be possible to construct an electric car that could go up to 500 km @ 100 km/h without significantly reducing the usable load and abandoning RoHS. The further bad news is that 500 km is still not enough range for regions like this place. Current diesel cars go up 1000 km, gasoline cars go up to 700 km before refuelling. The other factor is the environmental condition, especially temperature, that tends to reduce the range drastically. This is a sparsely populated country, with rather non-functional public transport system at the moment, which emphasizes personal cars at the Northern parts. Also, the recharging should be a very quick operation, and batteries with that large capacities are slow to recharge. I'm not saying it is impossible, but given the energy densities and that there has been an incentive to figure out better compounds, I'm not very positive about the improvement possibilities in the batteries.
As a side note, my laptop still lasts only two hours with a single charge. And nowadays cars take more fuel than the older ones, the reason being that the new cars are heavier due to the safety features required - the engines are more efficient per burned liter yes, but they still require more fuel! Madza 323 had a rather good 5.5 l / 100 km performance, and it was done in the 1980s! This might depend on the country you were born to though. I can imagine that the situation in US was drastically different.
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My laptop lasts 7 hours actually doing stuff (notes, documents, light web surfing). It lasts 4-5 hours doing multimedia and about 2 hours gaming. So improvements are possible :)
Hydogen might be a good option but then it's hydrogen to create electricity to power the wheels. So the "electric" portion of the drivetrain surely has room for innovation and refinement.
Sorry for waxing poetic but I always feel that if we, collectively, set our minds to solve problems a bunch of people will come up with some really great ideas and a few of them will even work. We do need a bit of a game changer. I'm hoping some of the nanotech and quantum research leads us down some new avenues not possible to explore before. Go 300 years ago and few thought we could fly.... try explaining the internet or smart phones to those people :) We'll see what the next even 50 years brings.
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There's hydrogen everywhere. Everywhere.
But it's either in space or in chemical compounds, and I'm pretty sure you need to invest energy to get it.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-tall-sunlight-to-hydrogen-neutron-analysis.html Relevant
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My solution: SCIENCE!
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I don't know if you are still working on the paper, but look up these terms, AO, NAO and PNA, La Nina and El Nino(for more fun look up both west and east based versions of these) and neutral.
Should add a flare to your existing data used. Note though, these are short term climate modifications ;)
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Sorry for waxing poetic but I always feel that if we, collectively, set our minds to solve problems a bunch of people will come up with some really great ideas and a few of them will even work. We do need a bit of a game changer.
You, sir, have inspired me. BEHOLD:
fuel efficient aircraft!
(http://www.artprints.com/images/ARTISTS/153-gurney/large/jg00028.jpg)
appliances requiring no electricity!
(http://otal.umd.edu/~vg/mssp96/ms14/project2/vaccuum.gif)
vehicles requiring no oil whatsoever!
(http://ofearna.us/books/foster/dinotopia1.jpg)
vastly increased food supply!
(http://www.adrockvision.com/blogs/media/users/bomb/flintstones_ribs.jpg)
And so much more!!
All we have to do is resurrect dinosaurs and all our problems will be solved :D
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My laptop lasts 7 hours actually doing stuff (notes, documents, light web surfing). It lasts 4-5 hours doing multimedia and about 2 hours gaming. So improvements are possible
Do not mix up improvements in the laptop power management to improvement in the batteries. A large fraction of the improved up-time can be explained with power management, and that effect I can see. My mobile works for a week with a single charge, and my gut feeling is that this is mainly due to more energy efficient design of circuitry. By the way, how many of the posters that participated to this thread are ready to give in their iPhones or Communicators for saving the environment?
The laptops in 2002 lasted about the same time in my work than the laptops in 2010. Work being heavy duty ray-tracing mostly. Yes, I get nowadays double the performance, but the actual hours haven't improved. This would indicate about a factor of two improvement in the capacity of the battery.
Can anyone find a chart of mobile phone battery capacities since the end of 1980s? I tried to look for that, but couldn't find one.
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My solution: SCIENCE!
But that would only work if some wise guys didn't reduce the hydrogen car research funds by 100 000 000 USD (http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=rip-hydrogen-economy-obama-cuts-hyd-2009-05-08) (unless that news is no longer true).
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1. advanced nuclear reactors (capable of burning thorium, current nuclear waste, and our uranium resources will last for thousands of years with them)
2. Solar concentrator plants (mechanical, not photovoltaics) - the most promising alternative energy source
3. energy storage and car fuel using hydrogen and this - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351341/Relief-pumps-Revolutionary-hydrogen-fuel-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html
Problem solved. :)
But AA president Edmund King warned: ‘The fact the hydrogen is cheaper now doesn’t mean it always will be because the Government would soon get its hands on it and increase the tax.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1351341/Relief-pumps-Revolutionary-hydrogen-fuel-cost-just-90p-GALLON-run-existing-cars.html#ixzz1D74x0nIJ
Dumb money-grubbing politicians... :doubt:
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Sorry for waxing poetic but I always feel that if we, collectively, set our minds to solve problems a bunch of people will come up with some really great ideas and a few of them will even work. We do need a bit of a game changer.
You, sir, have inspired me. BEHOLD:
fuel efficient aircraft!
(http://www.artprints.com/images/ARTISTS/153-gurney/large/jg00028.jpg)
vehicles requiring no oil whatsoever!
(http://ofearna.us/books/foster/dinotopia1.jpg)
Dinotopia, **** yeah! I loved that when I was a kid.
And for non-Brits, the reason why GALLON is capitalised in the above Daily Mail links (And take it with a pinch of a salt too, the Daily Mail is the worst kind of Tabloid, think fox news but a newspaper) is because in the UK we pay per litre, not per gallon. (In my area, diesel is currently £1.30 a litre, with unleaded petrol being around £1.25 per litre)
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oh my god dinotopia
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Thats hella expensive. Gasoline here is only 99 cents a litre... CAD
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hydrogen cars are DOA (dead on arrival). Probably DBA.
EV cars will run the decade from 2020 to 2030. Mark my words.
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hydrogen cars are DOA (dead on arrival). Probably DBA.
I also checked some of the reasons behind cancellation of the hydrogen based fuel research, there seems to be some reason behind the cancellation. It turned out there were plenty of difficulties that I didn't know of, including making of the hydrogen in the first place, and then the delivery of it to the location where it is needed. From energy density point of view, hydrogen really seems good, but practicum begs to differ.
As a short conclusion, it doesn't seem to be easy to replace fossilized fuels, not with battery technologies or hydrogen based fuels. There might be more potential in the battery technologies, but then again there is a lot to do in order to improve the energy densities of the batteries.
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Any practical way to artificially create petroleum that is less... polluting? Since it's a great energy storage medium, why not tweak it and use it?
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Any practical way to artificially create petroleum that is less... polluting? Since it's a great energy storage medium, why not tweak it and use it?
This was linked on a local weather forum I'm a part of. I don't know much about the article or how true it is.
http://www.gizmag.com/breakthrough-promises-150-per-gallon-synthetic-gasoline-with-no-carbon-emissions/17687/ (http://www.gizmag.com/breakthrough-promises-150-per-gallon-synthetic-gasoline-with-no-carbon-emissions/17687/)
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hydrogen cars are DOA (dead on arrival). Probably DBA.
I also checked some of the reasons behind cancellation of the hydrogen based fuel research, there seems to be some reason behind the cancellation. It turned out there were plenty of difficulties that I didn't know of, including making of the hydrogen in the first place, and then the delivery of it to the location where it is needed. From energy density point of view, hydrogen really seems good, but practicum begs to differ.
As a short conclusion, it doesn't seem to be easy to replace fossilized fuels, not with battery technologies or hydrogen based fuels. There might be more potential in the battery technologies, but then again there is a lot to do in order to improve the energy densities of the batteries.
Hydrogen has a great energy / weight ratio, but even in liquid form has something like 1/12 the energy / volume of petroleum.
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On batteries: I work with them. So I can very reasonably say that battery technology is improving.
It's not moving nearly as fast as the technology that it powers, but it's steadily advancing, getting more efficient and generally better. I think a pretty safe estimate would be that Ni-MH and Li-Ion technology has roughly doubled in capacity while the cost has been halved over the past 10 years. And research continues to find solutions: http://news.cnet.com/A-tenfold-improvement-in-battery-life/2100-1041_3-6226196.html
Sure your phones, laptops, etc. work about the same amount of time on a modern battery, but remember that even with better power management, all devices are still using WAY more electricity. Think that a smart phone purchased today would probably have more computing power than a top-shelf gaming PC 15 years ago.
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where did i find that. . . found a thingy on solar power. problem with it is space required for panels or gettin gpower to areas that need it withou blowing out the grid. anyway article was about solar paneling that was more akin to paint than smthing else. and you can put it on ur house, car etc. which wld help. cant find the link. . . gotta check with my enviro sci teacher tomorrow
"I don't know if you are still working on the paper, but look up these terms, AO, NAO and PNA, La Nina and El Nino(for more fun look up both west and east based versions of these) and neutral."
already turned it in. familiar with la nina and el nino. did include them in paper. hmm can you spell out the acroynms for AO and PNA? no idea what those of the top of my head and google lies
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correction. not paint. nano solar film. still in expieramental stages
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Hydrogen has a great energy / weight ratio, but even in liquid form has something like 1/12 the energy / volume of petroleum.
Yes, but it is still better than batteries, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to be very practical after all.
On batteries: I work with them. So I can very reasonably say that battery technology is improving.
It's not moving nearly as fast as the technology that it powers, but it's steadily advancing, getting more efficient and generally better. I think a pretty safe estimate would be that Ni-MH and Li-Ion technology has roughly doubled in capacity while the cost has been halved over the past 10 years. And research continues to find solutions: http://news.cnet.com/A-tenfold-improvement-in-battery-life/2100-1041_3-6226196.html
Sure your phones, laptops, etc. work about the same amount of time on a modern battery, but remember that even with better power management, all devices are still using WAY more electricity. Think that a smart phone purchased today would probably have more computing power than a top-shelf gaming PC 15 years ago.
Would you have a chart of capacity increase per year for the batteries? I'm looking for the trendline, and if the trend is linear, exponential or logarithmic. Also, replacing combustion engine with battery begs for question that how much does the cost of lithium increase due to the increased demand?