[Bobboau]

So the "fraud" isn't that there is no such thing as Global Warming, or even that its anthropogenic, its that someone or some group is using it for some sort of (nebulous) political gain?

the earth's temperature is rising, or seems to be at lease, it would be unpossible for someone to try to use this to wip people into a blind panic to try to pass some sort of agenda, nothing like that ever happens.

it would be unpossible that scientists who entered into the field to try and reverse humanities damage to the planet would be biased toward assuming human causes for any changed seen in the climate.

it would be unposible that the earth is experiencing changes that are totaly normal and well within the norms. humans must be far more destructive than all the asteroids and supervolcanos that have hit it over it's billions of years.

it would be totally out of line to suggest that people who might suggest such suggestions are lambasted with religious like fervor.

MP-Ryan does make a good point about biofuel being The Example of the green movement being used as a tool to prop up interests that have precisely dick to do with protecting the environment or conservationism of any kind.  Anthropogenic global warming is virtually proven as far as I'm concerned, but we will have to be diligent or good science will be co-opted by special interest groups who very much do not have humanity's long-term best interests in mind.  We've already seen how the corn lobby cashed in big time riding the "green" band-wagon.

see now, this is the sort of attitude I wish more people would have.

[Inquisitor]

I assume "unpossible" means "impossible"?

Its not a "blind" panic, and its a correlation to human presence as well as an anomalous change in rate and measurable (if by proxy) temp that indicates a probably cause-effect relationship. Its dramatic, and marked in time with our change from non-technologic to very technologic. And I'll be damned if someone tells me "don't worry, it will all be fine."

The only "evidence" to the contrary is people screaming at the dark because they don't like the political implications. Apparently they only care about the future generations when it means health care debt. **** the planet, its clearly less important than my desire to see liberals fail politically.

Of course that brings out their political opponents. These morons can rally around various flags and scream at each other. At the end of the day, there is real, repeateable expirmental and observational science here. You just need a grounding in chemistry, thermodynamics, and a smattering of other disciplines to see past the politically motivated arguments. And when you do that, the data has unpleasant connotations.

Unfortunately, nobody actually does that except for the investigators, and they are all part of this assine conspiracy.

[Bobboau]

unpossible is a sarcastic impossible

[Liberator]

Inq, the only real way to reverse it, if we are the ones causing it, it to revert to horse and buggy type technologies.  And somehow even if you managed to convince the populations of every western and eastern power to revert.  There's a not so small minority that would say "**** IT!  NOWS OUR CHANCE!!" and take over.

Besides, good luck telling that mother of 4 that has to carry her kids to soccer(futbol) practice that she has to start using a horse and cart and you'll have a riot and a whole lot of injured politicians and scientists.

I do not subscribe to the idea that the warming trend is our fault.  The world has been warming since the 1400s when The Little Ice Age ended, before there were cars and busses and trains and 1/125th of a trillion people living on this mudball.

Technology doesn't go backwards, and you can't put it back in the box it came out of.

[SpardaSon21]

Personally, I believe that if global warming is man-made, we are already past the point of no return and the best thing we can do is adapt to the coming changes.  Every single human activity from building roads to driving vehicles to generating power causes CO₂ emissions, and the only way for humans to completely eliminate our CO₂ emissions is for all of us to die.  Even if we go back to medieval tech we are still emitting lots of CO₂ from all the wood we are burning to heat our crappy un-insulated thatch houses.  And guess what, our dying corpses will release a bunch of carbon into the environment, so I guess we can't completely eliminate human CO₂ emissions even if we all decide to commit suicide and save the planet from ourselves.

[General Battuta]

Read posts plz:

The broad outline, though, deviates little from the IPCC's conclusions -unequivocal evidence of warming, more than 90% likelihood that humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases were principally to blame, projections of temperature and sea level rise, declining crop yields, mountain glacier melt, and considerable damage to ecosystems and the human economy.

Apparently there is stuff we can do to moderate the effects of the warming, and no it doesn't require horse and buggy type technologies (talk about a defeatist attitude.)

[Sushi]

Inq, the only real way to reverse it, if we are the ones causing it, it to revert to horse and buggy type technologies. 

I'm not at all convinced that this would be a bad thing.

[Flipside]

The culture of 'bigger, faster, more' is not vital to our survival, that's an external pressure put on us by organisations attempting to exploit us to our maximum. Whilst I can understand the need for faster modes of transport etc, the truth is that a lot of society could get by just fine without it. Also, particularly in the West, there is a fake need for the newest and shiniest of everything, people will buy new IPods and Mobile phones for no other reason than they have new applications on them, ones that are quite often never used by the person who bought it, but because it's more 'modern' people assume it's an improvement. The level of waste we generate is horrendous, and a moderate percentage of the electrical goods we so casually throw out are perfectly workable or repairable, but society doesn't support the 'repair over replace' mentality any more.

[perihelion]

  Are you people serious?  "Horse and buggy"???

There are scads of things that can be implemented now that, even if imperfect, are so much better than what we currently have.  Discussion of reverting back to pre-industrial technology is disingenuous at best, and an outright strawman at worst.  Do you really need a list of existing viable technology that's better than snorkeling oil out of the Middle East or sending more fly ash into the air?  Ok.  I'll give you an extremely abbreviated one.

1) Natural gas.  Build more gas fired plants rather than coal ones.  Still releases green house gases, but it does so with virtually no mercury or heavy metal emissions, and the green house gas emissions are 50% (or better) lower than coal fired plants.  We've also recently developed technology to go after gas deposits in North America that were previously unrecoverable.  Look up unconvesional gas plays re: shales.  Upped our estimated reserves quite a bit.  The recovery process is also significantly less environmentally destructive if done right.

2) Nuclear fission.  Duh.  And the reactors we have now are using 40 year old technology.  New plants using liquid metal cooled fast neutron reactors (lead-bismuth eutectic as pioneered by the Idaho National Lab is my favorite) have the potential to address both fuel efficiency and proliferation issues.

3) Wind and solar.  Imperfect, inconstant, not always there during peak load, yeah yeah yeah, it STILL can supplant the existing power supply and reduce the amount of power that has to come from non-recoverable sources.  And improvements to temporary energy storage technology are reducing the severity of even that issue.

4) Better emissions post-processing on existing equipment.  Emissions control technology has seen huge improvements over the last few years.  Start using it now rather than later.  It'll never happen without regulation!  But if there is a way to reduce the amount of toxins our plants and refineries pump into our air, shouldn't we be doing it?

5) Geothermal.  Do you have any idea how many oil and gas wells have been drilled in the continental US?  How many of those have been plugged and abandoned because the productive zones "watered out?"  Do you know what that means?  It means those zones were producing so much water that they weren't getting an economically viable amount of hydrocarbon from those wells anymore.  In a lot of cases, the bottom hole temperature of those "dead" wells is over 300ºF, and they were shut off because they were producing water.  Hot water.  That's practically screaming for someone to step in and put a geothermal turbine on it.  But, despite that, it has only been done in a couple places, usually by university research groups.  http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/zzz_re/re_geopowering2007.pdf

From the linked article:

Geothermal electrical power conjures images of volcanoes, geysers, and hot springs, of which only hot springs are present in Texas, specifically in the Trans-Pecos region and some areas in South Texas near the Rio Grande.  However while Texas does not have sufficiently hot shallow geothermal resources of the type mentioned above, it does have literally tens of thousands of oil and gas wells that have drilled sufficiently deep to reach temperatures of over 200, 300, and sometimes 400ºF within well bores.  The oil and gas industry has generally considered these high temperatures, and often the water found behind pipe in these formations as a major liability when in fact this hot water is an undeveloped energy asset that can develop out of the existing oil and gas industry.  Similarly the existing geothermal industry tends to be unaware of high temperatures and thermal gradients, documented permeability, porosity, and abundant formation brine that exist within deep sedimentary basins, as recognized by the oil and gas industry.  Although many of the same subsurface engineering and geoscience techniques are used in both industries, each industry has focused upon specific geological environments for entirely different energy goals.  Thus the oil and gas and the geothermal industries are like brothers who rarely speak to each other, which in this case is a detriment to both. 

That's an extremely abbreviated list of stuff that's out there right now.  Today's technology, not some "maybe someday, with enough money and research we'll be able to-"  Today.  Now.  It just needs to be implemented.  It's much better than building more coal plants.  And there are certainly plenty of people out there right now who could use the work.

[Flipside]

Er... only one person mentioned the horse and buggy

[Mika]

The level of waste we generate is horrendous, and a moderate percentage of the electrical goods we so casually throw out are perfectly workable or repairable, but society doesn't support the 'repair over replace' mentality any more.

While I agree with you, I'd like to point out that products are usually not easily repairable due to lack of spares and the culture of "it's cheaper to buy new one than to repair it".
If I could, I would still be using my Nokia 3310 that broke down last summer. That mobile phone was pretty much all I needed and already had plenty of features I never used. I'm disappointed of the camera in my newer Nokia. I would need to install PC Suite to get the stored images from phone? I don't think so.

The mixer also broke down after six months of use (six months!). I would have repaired that one if I had been able to get the spares. Unfortunately, the part that broke down utilized rubber that was vulcanized on top of a metal shaft and could not be replaced. Oh well, at least I tried. So back to shop and bought several times more expensive mixer. I'll be damned if this one breaks. The bad thing about the broken one is that it has a powerful electrical motor that cannot be used anywhere else, or I haven't figured out a place. High power and high thermal load, so no-no for a sustained use. Sounds like they optimized the price/sustainability ratio too well in that case.

Yes, a couple of tens of years back these would have been easily repaired.

[Kosh]

While I agree with you, I'd like to point out that products are usually not easily repairable due to lack of spares and the culture of "it's cheaper to buy new one than to repair it".

In many cases it actually is cheaper to throw them out than repair them.

[perihelion]

Er... only one person mentioned the horse and buggy

* Perihelion sneaks in, grabs his soap box, and sneaks back out hoping no one will notice. 

[Inquisitor]

@Liberator: That's the most assinine and ignorant thing I have seen you post. This is not a binary discussion, the choices are not "do nothing" or "throw away everything."

That belies a fundamental ignorance of carbon credits, for starters (not that those are the best solution).

Try again. You are a smart guy, or claim to be. Try again. This time actually try rather than spout Alex Jones bull****.

[Liberator]

carbon credits

The pope did this back in the middle ages, except he called it "Indulgences".

[General Battuta]

So now man-made carbon emissions are a sin?

Don't you want to place things under the control of the market?

[karajorma]

Inq, the only real way to reverse it, if we are the ones causing it, it to revert to horse and buggy type technologies.

And because you can't reverse something you should never attempt to mitigate the damage instead?

"Sorry, we can't reattach his arm and give him back 100% usage instantly so we're just going to let him bleed to death."


If you want to take part in adult discussions you really need to stop with this kind of asinine post. When you post something like this it shows that you don't care about the facts and simply wish to push your own agenda. Which is highly ironic since this is exactly what you claim the other side is doing.

Could it be that you find it so easy to believe in a conspiracy to shape people's opinions regardless of the facts because that is exactly what you know you are doing yourself?

[Inquisitor]

Ok, so you are actually a moron. guess we're done. Cheers.

[SpardaSon21]

Carbon credits are not a free market tool.  Carbon credits are only brought into existence by government mandate, and the only value they have is through artificial government-created scarcity.

[Inquisitor]

Explain them.

No more free rides, if you are not smart enough to explain your objections, or even what you are objecting to, this is not a conversation, its more arguments with dining room tables.

I have heard Glenn Becks arguments, what are yours?