i know i know
the world is ending
reminds me of san luis obisbo in 1973
the world is ending
reminds me of san luis obisbo in 1973
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“There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place”
Sir Winston Churchill -
If we could accept the arguments- 'we should help those less fortunate so they don't murder us in our sleep' and
- 'we should stop polluting because it not only is bad but it screws up private citizens land without due compensation'
And move on to talking about HOW we are going to address those issues I think we are making progress. AGW as a theory is a 'result' of years of pollution by humans. It is a long-term effect that is hard to visualize in a single lifetime although photography of glaciers and ice and stuff helps, excuses and other theories can be made to explain them.
Many posts ago I mentioned that humans emit 270 times as much co2 as the current volcanoes on our planet. It is like there is 11,200 human powered kilaueas (that big one in hawaii) churning out co2 emissions into our atmosphere. It is totally cool if we want to assume that those extra un-natural emissions 270 times above a natural level will have absolutely no effect on our climate and move on to addressing the other pollutants that we can more easily measure the effect of (acid rain, lead poisoning, slurry, dead coral reefs etc etc).
Point is that agw is a long term theory that is hard to explain until it is too late. In 100-200 years when we can look back at warming trends.... will we say 'oops that was just natural' or will we say 'holy balls we brought the planet back into the cretaceous period of co2 and temperature levels' with the resulting 1/2 species on the planet death and different climate patterns etc... fast 200 year change vs million year change.
I agree with the thread title that 'global warming' is over. Nobody cares to argue about it anymore because we are beating a dead zombie horse that just wont die. We KNOW we cant just keep burning fossil fuels because, if nothing else, we will run out of them in 100 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrole...ion_statisticsConsumption is currently around 84 million barrels (13.4×106 m3) per day, or 4.9 km3 per year. Which in turn yields a remaining oil supply of only about 120 years, if current demand remain static.
If current demand is static. China and india would love to argue with that.
Either way we need to stretch things out a bit until we can all figure out solar or some other energy source, co2 and climate or not. We all agree that there is a problem, just some of us think it is a much bigger problem causing much more damage than others. Lets all work together and fix it instead of pretending like nothing is wrong.
“Mayer, either the buffalo or the Indian must go. There isn’t any other way. Only when the Indian becomes absolutely dependent upon us for his every need will we be able to handle him. Every buffalo you kill now will save a white man’s life. Go to it.”
I would argue that severe irreversible change, under the guise of progress, is the true american way. I expect nothing less but would be grateful if we could do a little more now and then.
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Solar news updates:
Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. (BRK/A) agreed to spend as much as $2.5 billion to build two solar projects in California that are set to be the world’s largest photovoltaic development.
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Buffett has been increasing investment in wind and solar farms and last year formed a MidAmerican unit to support the projects it’s acquired, including the $2.4 billion 550-megawatt Topaz solar farm in California. Chief Financial Officer Patrick Goodman said in November the company favors bets on renewable energy amid high utility valuations.
Here's a surprising new fact about energy in the United States: the percentage of our electricity coming from the greenest sources — that is, the non-hydroelectric renewables such as solar, wind, geothermal and biomass — has doubled in just four years to nearly 6 percent. (Thanks to climate uberblogger Joe Romm for uncovering this data from the Energy Information Agency).
This significant win for clean energy has gone mostly unnoticed in the press. If anything, the story has been the opposite: recent reports herald the decline of wind, and for a year the media has made a big deal out of the demise of solar panel manufacturer Solyndra.
Given this negative drumbeat, it's not surprising that the business world tends to perceive renewable energy as an altruistic, rather than fiscally prudent, investment. But this view is dead wrong. The renewable energy industry is growing very fast... and not because it's a philanthropic effort.
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But all of this context misses a critical point that most businesspeople are overlooking: problems for manufacturers do not equal problems for the entire sector.The wind energy credit was also extended with the fiscal cliff resolution.It was easy to write off renewable energy as a side show at one or two percent of total electricity generation. But it isn't good business to ignore it now, as the economics get better and better. Making the assumption that solar or all green energy won't work because one company didn't pan out is absurd. In 2000, were all technology investments poor bets because Pets.com went under?
The cost of using renewable energy, either through power purchasing agreements that cost nothing up front or through direct investment, is dropping fast. This reality changes the calculus on green energy for homeowners, governments and corporations alike. Upfront costs are falling, which makes the ongoing variable cost of renewables — that is, zero — even more attractive. Better yet, zero is a predictable cost, which CFOs love.Comment
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I think sometimes it is challenging to find business people to understand their negative externalities, although the tide is changing thankfully for more responsible and sustainable models and strategy.Originally posted by Q5Quint View Post
As can be seen from fixing the acid rain problem, market-based solutions can perform very well.
I think that the environmental, energy, and economic benefits from dealing with slurry in a renewable and sustainable fashion is huge.
Speaking of lead poisoning and not wanting to be murdered in your sleep, have you seen this piece yet?
Gotta love econometrics. And science.
Not just an econometric conjecture like on Freakonomics, but supported by multiple studies at multiple levels.This has been a topic of intense study because of the growing body of research linking lead exposure in small children with a whole raft of complications later in life, including lower IQ, hyperactivity, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities.
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The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.
Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.
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In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
The answer, it turned out, involved "several months of cold calling" to find lead emissions data at the state level. During the '70s and '80s, the introduction of the catalytic converter, combined with increasingly stringent Environmental Protection Agency rules, steadily reduced the amount of leaded gasoline used in America, but Reyes discovered that this reduction wasn't uniform. In fact, use of leaded gasoline varied widely among states, and this gave Reyes the opening she needed. If childhood lead exposure really did produce criminal behavior in adults, you'd expect that in states where consumption of leaded gasoline declined slowly, crime would decline slowly too. Conversely, in states where it declined quickly, crime would decline quickly. And that's exactly what she found.Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn't fit the theory. "No," he replied. "Not one."
Just this year, Tulane University researcher Howard Mielke published a paper with demographer Sammy Zahran on the correlation of lead and crime at the city level. They studied six US cities that had both good crime data and good lead data going back to the '50s, and they found a good fit in every single one. In fact, Mielke has even studied lead concentrations at the neighborhood level in New Orleans and shared his maps with the local police. "When they overlay them with crime maps," he told me, "they realize they match up."Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.
When differences of atmospheric lead density between big and small cities largely went away, so did the difference in murder rates.
Like many good theories, the gasoline lead hypothesis helps explain some things we might not have realized even needed explaining. For example, murder rates have always been higher in big cities than in towns and small cities. We're so used to this that it seems unsurprising, but Nevin points out that it might actually have a surprising explanation—because big cities have lots of cars in a small area, they also had high densities of atmospheric lead during the postwar era. But as lead levels in gasoline decreased, the differences between big and small cities largely went away. And guess what? The difference in murder rates went away too. Today, homicide rates are similar in cities of all sizes. It may be that violent crime isn't an inevitable consequence of being a big city after all.
The gasoline lead story has another virtue too: It's the only hypothesis that persuasively explains both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and its fall beginning in the '90s. Two other theories—the baby boom demographic bulge and the drug explosion of the '60s—at least have the potential to explain both, but neither one fully fits the known data. Only gasoline lead, with its dramatic rise and fall following World War II, can explain the equally dramatic rise and fall in violent crime.Comment
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It's usually used to show us how bad us westerners are, the use of "what the rest of the world thinks of us...", so...
Here is something the rest of the world thinks of us.
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That's what the rest of the world thinks? No, that's what an ultra conservative Russian thinks. Coming from a guy who promotes war and natural disaster as a punishment from god, I'll take his opinion with a 10 pound bag of salt because a few grains aren't gonna cut it. He's fuckin nuts.
No real science is conducted huh? Right, it's all just an attempt to reward individuals. This guy has the inside scoop.The US alone spends $7 billion each year on warming "studies", which is, in truth, nothing but a huge money laundering operation, as no real science is conducted and vapid alarmist reports the only product generated.
Ignorant man is ignorant, spouting off blatant fallacies as truth.Amongst the newest claims of pending disasters, is a cry that icepacks are now melting at three times the rate of the 1990s, even though there has not been any significant warming in the past 20 years.
When stupidity and scientific illiteracy is your strongest asset in an argument, you're not going to gain much momentum in actually convincing anyone other than like minded ignoramus's.Comment
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Does one blogger represent what the rest of the world thinks of us? Particularly one from a nation whose majority of exports come from dinosaur energy.Originally posted by Farbin Kaiber View Post
The bias is obvious and unlike a proper article, not of the conclusions are based with sources or facts. You might as well base the ROW perspective on "The World is Not Enough".
The US alone spends $7 billion each year on warming "studies", which is, in truth, nothing but a huge money laundering operation, as no real science is conducted and vapid alarmist reports the only product generated.
I'm not sure why they are worried as China and other countries are still thirsty, but maybe they think that if sustainable technology grow and alternative fuel sources are developed, then their exports will be challenged. Which while draw their finances into question.
There may be only one thing dumber than getting addicted to consuming oil as a country — and that is getting addicted to selling it. Because getting addicted to selling oil can make your country really stupid, and if the price of oil suddenly drops, it can make your people really revolutionary. That’s the real story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union — it overdosed on oil — and it could end up being the real story of Iran, if we’re smart.
It is hard to come to Moscow and not notice what the last five years of high oil prices have done for middle-class consumption here.How Russia deals with its oil and gas windfall is going to be a huge issue. But today I’d like to focus on how the Soviet Union was killed, in part, by its addiction to oil, and on how we might get leverage with Iran, based on its own addiction.So if oil prices fall sharply again, Iran’s regime will have to take away many benefits from many Iranians, as the Soviets had to do. For a regime already unpopular with many of its people, that could cause all kinds of problems and give rise to an Ayatollah Gorbachev. We know how that ends. “Just look at the history of the Soviet Union,” Professor Mau said.
In short, the best tool we have for curbing Iran’s influence is not containment or engagement, but getting the price of oil down in the long term with conservation and an alternative-energy strategy. Let’s exploit Iran’s oil addiction by ending ours.
The Russian perspective is mostly assumptions and conjecture, based in fear of the world finding sustainable alternatives to dinosaur juice and gas.
A huge portion of the world would just like electricity that miserable infrastructure doesn't allow access to, like Africans who are poisoned by kerosene lamp fumes and could really use a LED lamp with human or solar powered.Comment
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I could have told u global warming was done cause its like 20degrees outside.Comment
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In other sustainable news, Pirelli is going to use waste rice husk ash in its tires and will be more environmentally friendly and also cheaper than current processes.
Fuel-saving tyres
Hysterectomy
Silica extracted from rice husks makes for greener tyres
Economist - 1/5/2013
Sustainable can mean a chain of using another person's waste as your input to not only help the planet but also save money. Why would people attack smart efforts like this? Innovative science and technology in the name of nature can also improve performance, not just efficiency.Grasses contain tiny pieces of silica, called phytoliths (illustrated above), whose job is to discourage herbivores, both vertebrate and insect. Pirelli’s engineers realised that these defensive weapons are the ideal size to add to tyres in order to control hysteresis loss, and that a ready supply of them is available in the husks left over from the milling of rice.
Rice husks were once waste. These days they have some value because they are used as fuel in small-scale electricity generators. But from Pirelli’s point of view, that is a good thing, because what the firm is interested in is the phytoliths left behind in the ash—and until now the ash itself really was waste. The firm has set up a factory in Meleiro, a town in a rice-growing area of southern Brazil, to extract phytoliths and put them in tyres. The ash comes from rice husks burned to help power the factory.
A tonne of rice produces around 200kg of husks and those, in turn, yield 40kg of silica. According to Daniele Lorenzetti, who is in charge of the project, by 2015 the factory will be providing nearly a third of the silica Pirelli needs for the 400,000 tonnes of tyres it makes in Brazil.
The technology could spread fast, especially in other rice-growing areas. For Brazilians that would have a delicious irony. The Amazon rainforest was the original home of rubber trees, but Brazil’s rubber industry was devastated when seeds smuggled to Asia were used to set up rival plantations. By taking an Asian crop and using it to make better tyres, they will be getting their own back.
From an ecological point of view, the new Pirelli Cinturato P7 offers three headline benefits - a CO2 emission reduction of up to 4 grams per kilometre driven, 30 per cent lower noise emissions and a 4 per cent fuel saving.In mid-February, Pirelli gave details of how its 2009 – 2011 industrial plan means the company will have an increasingly “green” focus. In particular Pirelli committed to developing a series of new materials that for use in tyre compounds.Win-win.This also means that unlike bio-diesel there aren’t any ethical or philosophical dilemmas attached to this bio-product’s development - no food production space is being taken up for an industrial product. However, from the tyre industry’s perspective, perhaps the best benefit is in its wet grip/rolling resistance characteristics. While the product itself is mostly silica, RHA is said to offer marginally better performance in than the expensively and less environmentally produced silica tyre manufacturers currently use.Comment
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Yeah I read that piece when it first came out~ my old roomate had a subscription I still get- Mjones always has some really interesting stuff and the lead issue seems plausible for sure.Originally posted by rwh11385 View PostSpeaking of lead poisoning and not wanting to be murdered in your sleep, have you seen this piece yet?
Gotta love econometrics. And science.
Not just an econometric conjecture like on Freakonomics, but supported by multiple studies at multiple levels.
To quote myself again:
Also lols:If we keep shitting into the air the winds of shit are eventually going to blow up a shitstorm of shit rain all over all of our shit.
I enjoy when other countries aka russia refers to both our political parties as the same, since they pretty much are.The first salvo has been fired by a British Warming dandy named Lord Nicholas Stern of Brantford, who as an academic at Whitehall, has made a career and quite a bit of money off of this scam. Lord Stern, a former World Bank chief economist and author of the landmark Stern review of the economics of climate change, was a close associate of Gordon Brown and the Leftists, who with the Tory counterparts and in parallel to the American Democrats/Republicans set up the grand and self destructive economic schemes that have plunged their own nations and many many others into the abyss of poverty.Comment
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Originally posted by rwh11385 View Post
However, during the last 150 yr there is no physical reason why these variables should share the same order of integration. However, the fact that they do not share the same order of integration over this period means that scientists who make strong interpretations about the anthropogenic causes of recent global warming should be cautious. Our polynomial cointegration tests challenge their interpretation of the data.This means, however, that as with all hypotheses, our rejection of AGW is not absolute; it might be a false positive, and we cannot rule out the possibility that recent global warming has an anthropogenic footprint. However, this possibility is very small, and is not statistically significant at conventional levels.Comment
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dude, the science is settled, statistics or no statistics“There is nothing government can give you that it hasn’t taken from you in the first place”
Sir Winston ChurchillComment
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Read through Mother Jones...the site is a heavy liberal bias. No wonder Rhw is linking from there.Your signature picture has been removed since it contained the Photobucket "upgrade your account" image.
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the [federal] government." ~ James Madison
"If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen" Barack ObamaComment
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