Climate change naysayers

[AFPheonix]

I'm surprised nobody figured jets into the CO2 equation. I'm sure those things spew out huge amounts of pollutants even idling at terminals--everyone seems to leave those out, and ill-maintained diesel trucks too. When's the last time you saw a diesel truck that was *not* spewing black clouds when accelerating?

Oh, but they have. Unfortunately, there isn't a viable alternative to them at this point in the game.
The biggest polluters by far are coal-fired power plants.

Guess which country has one of the largest coal supplies and a very powerful lobby for the industry in government?

[Greenday]

Guess which country has one of the largest coal supplies and a very powerful lobby for the industry in government?

South Africa?

[AFPheonix]

Wrong continent

[ElMarko]

Several reasons.

1) Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

Environmentalst have a history of lying. Remember the Alar scare. It was cooked up ty the NRDC with a marketing firm to increase donations. The supervisior of a government agency (I forgot which one) told some underlings when they presented an negative evaluation of the NRDC's claims that they had to come back with different results.

Government agencies can't be taken at their word. If they can't find problems in their purview their budgets get cut. No bureaucrat likes that.

2) The climate has been warming for 10,000 years, at least.

3) None of the models they use account for the medieval warm period and the following little ice age.

4) In one of the often cited models you could input noise and still get the scarry warming output.

5) Whenever the people trying to sell it use graphics they do so deceitfully (A great book on this is The Visual Representation of Quantitative Information by Edwart Tufte.). Consicer Algores propaganda piece. When he shows population projections he conviently chopped it off his graph before the 2100ish leveling off point, leading people to believe that if nothing is done it will keep growing exponentially. BTW if he was really concerned he would have flown commercial when he was promoting the movie instead of taking a private jet with only him and his cronies on board.

6) If a bandwagon is full of Hollywood people it is usually heading towards stupidville.

[Boozy]

1) Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.[INDENT]Environmentalst have a history of lying. Remember the Alar scare. It was cooked up ty the NRDC with a marketing firm to increase donations. The supervisior of a government agency (I forgot which one) told some underlings when they presented an negative evaluation of the NRDC's claims that they had to come back with different results.
Government agencies can't be taken at their word. If they can't find problems in their purview their budgets get cut. No bureaucrat likes that.

You're right. We cannot rule out a global consortium of scientists and scientific organizations, both public and private, from over thirty countries, all getting together and putting together an elaborate conspiracy to fool the human race.

But its a risk I'm willing to take.

2) The climate has been warming for 10,000 years, at least.

Quite possibly due to human activities. Clear cutting of forests started more than five thousand years ago, as well as wet rice farming, a huge contributor of methane.
The natural cycle of the earth's climate change would indicate that we should have been in a cool period for the last few hundred years - but we aren't.
The changes seen in the last few hundred years, since the western world industrialized, are almost certainly due to the increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. No other historical climate change culprits (polar tilt, solar/volcanic activity) are being observed.

3) None of the models they use account for the medieval warm period and the following little ice age.

False. Solar activity is usually pointed to as the culprit here. This behaviour is not occurring now.
It is also important to note that the MWP and the LIA was not global in scale, unlike today's climate change activity. It was mainly limited to the North Atlantic area.
This argument is a popular one with global warming skeptics. Scientists have expressed confusion over why its being grasped at...its not even close to being the same thing.

4) In one of the often cited models you could input noise and still get the scarry warming output.

I don't know what model you're talking about, and my google-fu fails me.

5) Whenever the people trying to sell it use graphics they do so deceitfully (A great book on this is The Visual Representation of Quantitative Information by Edwart Tufte.). Consicer Algores propaganda piece. When he shows population projections he conviently chopped it off his graph before the 2100ish leveling off point, leading people to believe that if nothing is done it will keep growing exponentially. BTW if he was really concerned he would have flown commercial when he was promoting the movie instead of taking a private jet with only him and his cronies on board.[

Graphs can be used by both sides of the debate in a deceptive manner, as I'm sure they have. I haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth", but it is important to note that the documentary was put together for non-science minded people. I have not drawn any of my conclusions, nor has the scientific community drawn theirs, from looking at graphs. They analyze the data.

Your dislike of graphs supports neither side of the issue. Moot point.

6) If a bandwagon is full of Hollywood people it is usually heading towards stupidville.

I don't need to refute this one, because I know you put it in for laughs. And I did get a chuckle out of it!

[mauispiderweb]

Oh, but they have. Unfortunately, there isn't a viable alternative to them at this point in the game.
The biggest polluters by far are coal-fired power plants.

Guess which country has one of the largest coal supplies and a very powerful lobby for the industry in government?

Unfortuantely, that would be the US, though Russia and China are not far behind when it comes to reserves.

[rahmota]

When's the last time you saw a diesel truck that was *not* spewing black clouds when accelerating?

Umm when its powered by bio diesel? Bio diesel runs quite a bit cleaner and smoother than petro-diesel.

This post brought to you by the Bio-diesel promotion co-operative....

http://www.biodiesel.org

[AFPheonix]

Not to mention that the newer diesel trucks and cars are cleaner burning than they used to be, and are frankly more fuel efficient than their gas counterparts.

As a bonus, in my limited experience, diesel pickups tend to have more torque than gas powered equivalents.
More of a pain to fix though, and heaven help you if you run it out of fuel.

[rahmota]

AFP:

As a bonus, in my limited experience, diesel pickups tend to have more torque than gas powered equivalents.
More of a pain to fix though, and heaven help you if you run it out of fuel.

Oh yeah the torque band on a diesel is a lot wider and deeper than a gas powered vehcile. Ie you get more power over more rpms at lower rpms. Which is really nice as some gas engines have real narrow shallow power bands. It basically means a person should look at what they are going to use a vehcile for and match the amount of power band to the job.

And as for being harder to fix it all depends on what goes wrong with them. In many ways the fuel system is a bit simpler as well as the electrical system being somewhat simpler. Mainly everything is built a bit tougher/durable than in a gas engine due to the higher compression ratios that they have to withstand.

As for running out of fuel that is a major pain. But then agian you can have similar issues with a gas powered engine as well. Air in the lines is still air in the lines.

[AFPheonix]

I suppose I should say more of a pain for ME to fix, because nothing looks right under the hood

But then, I really can't recognize much on my Forester, either. Fortunately it's still under warranty so if something goes kablooie, I can take it in.

[rahmota]

Dont feel bad AFP, I've been workign on cars since I was old enough to know which tool to hand my dad and stuff under the hood of a newer vehicle still doent look right to me either. Thank the gods for repair manuals....

Oh well eventually when hydrogen fuel cell electric cars get common there wont be much under the hood to repair anyhow. Just unplug everything pull it out and plug in a new one. Easier than fixing your computer.

[AFPheonix]

Heh heh heh....I really haven't had to really work on a car since my 83' Subaru. God, that thing had so many vacuum hoses it looked like a spider had crawled in there and died.
That, and it had so many oil leaks, it pretty much changed itself every 3k miles

[rahmota]

Well it seems like they've replaced the vacuum hoses with electric wires and all sorts of other nice neat black boxes that go kablooey when least expected or wanted........

Yeah I've had a few of those self oil changing cars before. Very convenient....My old buick before it caught on fire was nicknamed the exxon valdez.

[Seshat]

Regardless of whether the scientists are right about global warming or not, we will be running out of usable oil. Maybe we'll figure out ways to fully drain the world's oilfields, but it's still a limited resource. Coming up with alternatives is only sensible.

Here in Aussieland, we're more vulnerable to weather than you guys bordering the Atlantic seem to be. We're in a decade-long drought right now, and everyone's on water restrictions. Even the real estate agents and businessmen are driving dirty cars and putting up with un-manicured lawns and dry gardens.

Next year, they're expecting the hydroelectric generators to fail, unless we get rain. (And unless the media is blowing things out of proportion.) Even if it's not next year, though, it'll happen unless we get enough rain.

For us, it's worth converting. Installing rainwater tanks and solar/wind generators in private homes. Setting up graywater systems to water our gardens and flush our loos.

And the alternative fuels are on their way, and watching the spread of this company, they're price-competitive.

[protege]

Yeah I've had a few of those self oil changing cars before. Very convenient....My old buick before it caught on fire was nicknamed the exxon valdez.

My parents had a Dodge Caravan and a beat-up Taurus that would self-change. The van did it by burning, and the Taurus simply had an oil leak.

As for developing alternative fuels, I'm all for it. Sooner or later, our oil reserves will run out...and we'll have to do something. Also, I'd rather *not* depend on the Middle East for oil.