Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

Terraformer · 2007-11-26 04:25:43

Right, Don't Panioc, Don't Panic, Don't Panic!

Let's think calmly. A rising demand for boats/ships will mean more boat/ship making companies. Those companies need cheap labor. They'll move to third world countries. That generates employment. Bring in regulations for a minimum wage. People in third world countries get richer. They buy boats.

Anyway, where did I say I was refering to modern houseboat designs? A platform of wood lashed together with houses on top would work. There would still be Islands dotted around the place very close together. They can anchor to those. Mybe join Islands up. Like the Incans? did. They also grew crops on the boats.

JoshNH4H · 2007-11-27 14:27:21

What happens when we use up all of the metals to build the boats with?
What happens when we can't build giant docks b/c we've cut down all of the forest?
What happens when we run out of fresh water and crude oil?
We can't puriify ocean water b/c that is fairly energy intensive.

By my caculations, the biological carrying capacity (the amount of people the biosphere can sustain forever) of a civilized earth, pre industrial revolution was, 500 million people. The industrial carrying capacity (How many people we can feed, clothe, etc, at today's standards) is about 4 billion. The current population of the earth is almost 7 billion. If that doesn't at least ring bells in your head, than something is wrong. This isn't the time to panic, no, but it is the time (or maybe past time) to start doing something. We can't, by any means, transport 6.5 billion people anywhere, and even if we could, it would be the same problem.

But no need to respond to this part of the post by saying (ONCE AGAIN) don't panic.

Just try to answer the questions. Since you seem to have missed everyone else's, I'll put them in giant, bold, underlined letters below, to reinforce it.

What happens when we use up all of the metals to build the boats with?
What happens when we can't build giant docks b/c we've cut down all of the forest?
What happens when we run out of fresh water and crude oil?
We can't puriify ocean water b/c that is fairly energy intensive.

Maybe that got through.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-27 22:49:13

One thing that really puzzles me is WHY they are so desperate to stop this debate, that they are willing to use such contemptible tactics? ("Millions of people to Antarctica", "Chicken Little", my God!) Would it really hurt them to either a) acknowledge that some people are concerned and discuss this rationally out of simple politeness. Or b) not bother to take part in a debate that does not interest them. It would seem to be easy for them to take a) or b). But instead, we get a showcase of insults and contempt. (Ecologists = people who sterilize millions. Millions of refugees = Antarctica and Siberia) I would be ashamed to post such stuff. Why are their egos so involved that they stoop to such behaviour???

Rick, a debate has two sides to it. If everyone agreed with you, there would be no debate. I have a disagreement with you about whether global warming requires immediate drastic action or not. I prefer to have faith in human progress rather than be a pesimist and assume we'll go technologically nowhere in the next 60 years. The drying up of the aquifier, could be solved by a desalinization plant, and did you take a look at that "Dubya" map, it shows that much of the regions where drought would occur would actually be flooded by the rising ocean, and all the evaporation from the encroaching ocean would create a wetter climate for the surrounding area, the map also showed a smaller Sahara Desert, deserts changing into grasslands and getting swallowed by ocean, the map shows an Antartica free of ice, I think its a very real and likely possibility that people will start living in Antartica in large numbers if the climate there becomes more hospitable.

Anyway, my advice is, this entire thread is a shining example showcasing the tactics used by the apologists on a very serious subject that will affect all of us in the coming years. ANYONE reading this thread can see the TYPE of effort each side has put into the discussion.
I suggest that we let them get the last word and do not dignify their insults, (sorry, I should have said 'solutions') with a reply. Perhaps after they get the last word, the moderators of the site will lock this thread so we can get on to talking about Mars.
Warm regards, Rick.

I'm not insulting anybody, I just think we shouldn't kill ourselves trying to rescue the Earth from global warming, the result doesn't look so terrible that we couldn't survive on such a changed planet, the KT extinction at the end of the Dinosaur Age looks by comparison to be much worse than what's going on now. The Earth is a dynamic and changing thing, it would be pure folly for us to try and hold it in stasis, and we ourselves are a product of Earth and an agent of climate change. I think we ought to hold a balanced perspective on what global climate change would mean rather than dwelling only on the negative and trying to panic the populace into drastic action which may not do any good. As for all the poor people, they should change their pattern of living so they are less poor. If we worry about how they are going to hew buckets of water from the local water hole 300 years from now, there is something wrong with that assuption. Instead of worrying how they'll maintian their subsistance farm, why not work on ways to make them more economically productive rather than maintain this stupid third world "hand to mouth" existance. I've heard of people getting run over by cars as they crossed the highways to get their buckets of water. Haven't they heard of plumbing! A simple concept that's been around for thousands of years, no excuse not to have plumbing.

RickSmith · 2007-11-27 22:52:09

What happens when we use up all of the metals to build the boats with?
What happens when we can't build giant docks b/c we've cut down all of the forest?
What happens when we run out of fresh water and crude oil?
We can't puriify ocean water b/c that is fairly energy intensive.

Hi jumpboy11j, everyone.
I doubt we will ever run out of metals and crude oil. But as the good deposits are exploited those resources will be priced out of the range of the millions of poor people that, some have suggested, take to the seas.

However, you are bang on with your comment on fresh water out at sea. Boiling sea water to get fresh is VERY energy intensive.

The reed boats that terraformer mentioned were the totora reed boats on Lake Titicaca. A rich lake is far easier to live on than the oceans Note, that these people's homes were on land. However, the lake is so calm they could go on trips lasting several weeks.

Furthermore, the logs lashed together 'idea' was a suggested solution to massive global warming and flooding. People who study hurricanes pay careful attention to the 29.5 degree C isotherm. Areas of the ocean inside this temperature gradient have so much warm water vapor that hurricanes grow. Over water colder than that, they shrink. Currently the 29.5 C isotherms are small, roughly triangular, areas of oceans off the equator. If we warm the planet two degrees, then the 29.5 C isotherms would be huge. Hurricanes could grow stronger and stronger over vast areas, and keep growing into significantly higher latitudes. This makes the suggested, 'small boat' excuse even weaker.

When the USA abandoned its South Vietnamese allies (and cut off military supplies to that government), North Vietnam conquered that nation with an armored assault that had more tanks and vehicles than D-Day. People undesirable to the new government we sent to reeducation camps which killed an estimated 12 million 'comrade citizens'. People desperate to leave this regime took to small boats. They were the 'boat people'.

The US media ignored the story as much as it could. They had no desire to show what a horrible mess the USA had created, when it abandoned those who trusted them.

If terraformer was serious about his suggestion, he could do some research and show just how well the thousands of boat people fared.

However, I would be very surprised if he ever does this. Research would require effort. His 'suggestion' is not a serious attempt to find a solution to the problems posited. It was (I think) made to trivialize the subject and insult the people contributing to this thread.

Criticizing terraformer's ideas feels a little bit like shooting fish in a barrel but a comment he made suggested to me another way to get to Mars. All the USA has to do is raise the minimum wage to $1 billion per hour. Then everyone in the country will have enough money to finance a Mars mission. We could have 100,000 Mars programs!

I'm afraid I'm not setting much of an example on the ignore them and maybe they will go away strategy.

Warm regards, Rick.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-27 23:29:39

Some things Terraformer says does appear a bit nutty. I just assume he's joking, that's all There would still be plenty of land left after the oceans have rised 160 meters, this won't be a "Waterworld" as in the movie. People will still live on land, they'll just live on other land if they have to move. A flooded Earth will create more shallow oceans, this will be a boon to the fishing industry. Shallow oceans, and a warmer Earth also means more plant life, more photosynthesis and more oxygen is produced.

RickSmith · 2007-11-28 02:06:55

Rick, a debate has two sides to it. ... I prefer to have faith in human progress rather than be a pesimist and assume we'll go technologically nowhere in the next 60 years.

Hello Mr Kalbfus,
If you really meant no insult by the chicken little comparison and you are serious about your suggestions and not just bringing them up to trivialize the problems, then you have my attention.

The drying up of the aquifier, could be solved by a desalinization plant, ...
...deserts changing into grasslands...

I think you would need many desalinization plants. But let's say that taking sea water, boiling it, condensing the fresh water, pumping the fresh water up hill to the American bread basket and then moving it to individual fields takes only 10,000 times more energy than pumping water out of the aquifer. This will make the American wheat cost more, wouldn't it? If the agro-businesses can't be run for a profit they would shut down, wouldn't they? With no irrigation, and the water table dozens of meters deeper than it historically was, this area would revert to a desert, wouldn't it?

So whether it takes one desalinization plant or 100,000, I don't think this problem will be solved at the last minute. I think that when that underground lake is gone then so will the American Bread Basket.

Furthermore, how much oil and gas will be burnt to boil and move all that water? If we were making a giant push to fusion I would be less worried about the future, but look at what the Bush administration has done to fusion funding. Look at what it did to the Electric Car! Look what happened to the Magnetoplasmadynamic power plants and fission power plants. I see no indication that we are going to dump oil any time soon.

As for the deserts, it is far easier to make a desert than to get rid of one. How many deserts do you know of that human beings have reclaimed (perhaps with a desalinization plant). If this map shows vast desert areas turning into grass lands, then I think it is HIGHLY optimistic.

Greece was turned into a desert by over exploitation of its ecosystem. (It used to be rich forest.) The Greek government has tried for decades to reforest these lands but the soil is gone (erosion), the land is hot (which reduces local precipitation) and the country is poor (in part because it is a desert). You might spend some time reviewing how easy Greece has had it, trying to improve its ecology. And it has a desert with a fair bit of rain fall.

...and did you take a look at that "Dubya" map, it shows that much of the regions where drought would occur would actually be flooded by the rising ocean, and all the evaporation from the encroaching ocean would create a wetter climate for the surrounding area, ....

Actually I didn't look at it. I think that the we will have huge problems long, LONG before the antarctic ice sheet melts. But even assuming Antarctica was ice free what does that get us? We make some reservations and dump refugees on a continent with no soil and something like 3 months of no sun. Well, I guess that that solves the main problem of which countries are going to adopt all those refugees. By the way, how many countries in the world welcomed large numbers of boat people? How many countries took thousands of poor people from the Sudan famine? These are microscopic refugee problems compared to the one you feel is so easily solved.

I'm not insulting anybody, I just think we shouldn't kill ourselves trying to rescue the Earth from global warming, the result doesn't look so terrible that we couldn't survive on such a changed planet, the KT extinction at the end of the Dinosaur Age looks by comparison to be much worse than what's going on now. ...

I am pretty sure that I have not suggested that we kill anyone. I have suggested that we work to minimize adding even more carbon to the air. But many people like to suggest that this noble goal is equivalent to:

-- Destroying the economy.
-- Living in the dark.
-- Beggaring ourselves.
-- Freezing in the Winter.
-- Killing ourselves.
-- Panicking. etc.

Wildly exaggerating the costs of conservation / converting to cleaner energy, so as to make it easier to dismiss the debate, does not endear you to me. In reply to either you or terraformer, I mentioned that Europe (which has very strong green political parties and environmental regulations with teeth) has an economy and currency that are growing faster than the USA. I don't recall either of you commenting on this point.

Furthermore, US cars pollute so badly that they can no longer be sold in many parts of the world. Fuel efficient cars are very important in poorer nations where the cost of gasoline is prohibitive. This is an easy to understand example of where better conservation would help the US economy. But I don't recall you discussing this point either.

So if you are going to say, that reducing carbon emissions will "kill ourselves" I don't buy it. I am tired of these ridiculous, excessive claims of the impossibly high 'costs' coming from slowing our burning of ground carbon. When people talk about reducing carbon emissions means we will huddle in the dark, they deserved to be challenged. They should be asked to provide some shred of evidence rather than just verballing flinging impossibly high 'costs' into the mental arena. Especially when Japan and Europe are examples that ecological victories do not 'beggar' their economies and make them 'shiver in the dark'.

So perhaps you could give statistics or some evidence on how many people will have to die? Maybe a few, will be only maimed.

Now it would be easy for you to make some straw man argument where to stop all carbon emissions we would have to bla, bla, and this would cost the economy umpteen trillions of dollars per week. To make things more solid, you could talk about the costs of adopting Robert Zubrin's plan here:

Excerpt Zubrin's Energy Plan

The Earth is a dynamic and changing thing, it would be pure folly for us to try and hold it in stasis, ...

Wow. This is poetry worthy of some thought I think.

Now when you say the Earth is 'dynamic and changing' what do you mean? It sure sounds pretty. Dynamic is good, it is cool. We WANT things to be dynamic right? And Stasis is BAD.

You might mean that the Earth has earthquakes and volcanoes and plate tectonics. But we are not trying to stop that. We can't.

You might mean the circulation of the North Atlantic conveyor belt. We are doing our best to stop that all right.

You might mean the life forms and species, the whole ecosystems that make up the Earth and support us economically and biologically. We are stopping those by habitat destruction and creating agricultural mono-cultures. We are also stopping that by desertification. You are right, we don't want to stop (or hurt) the Earth's ecosystems. But we are.

So after thinking about your comment above, you are right. I don't want to stop the dynamic Earth. But I do want to stop (or at least slow) the unnatural build up of CO2 in our atmosphere.

...and we ourselves are a product of Earth and an agent of climate change.

Is this trying to say that since we are a natural product of Earth, that climate change is good??? There are many societies that have gone beyond their ecological carrying capacity. They were natural products of Earth. That did not make them happy with their folly. Have you read "Collapse" by Jered Diamond?

I think we ought to hold a balanced perspective on what global climate change would mean rather than dwelling only on the negative ...

Hmmm.... You are right. Here in B.C. I am looking at the billions of dollars damage being done to our forests by the Pine Bore beetle. But I am not looking at the positive ways that global warming has helped me. (Actually, I can honestly not think of any right now but there may be some.)

However, there seems to be 10 or 50 or 1000 bad things that are associated with global warming for every good thing. Why is this? Perhaps it is because ecologies and societies have adjusted and evolved for current conditions. The evils we know, so to speak. If those conditions change (especially if they change quickly), there will be upheaval and death.

...rather than dwelling only on the negative and trying to panic the populace into drastic action which may not do any good.

But I think that this is a BS argument in a lot of ways.

First, we are getting reports of tropical parasites being seen in the southern USA and Europe where they have not been possible before. We had a heat wave in Europe a couple summers ago that killed tens of thousands of people. We are seeing birds that are having trouble feeding their young because the bugs they usually eat are out of sync with the birds migration patterns because spring is coming 3.5 weeks earlier than normal. We are seeing fish stocks dying and being taken over with jelly fish and toxic algae. Coral reefs are dying because the water is too warm.

We are seeing bad things happening now. We see the possibility of truly terrible things. Massive greenhouse temperatures by degassing oceans. Hydrogen sulfide eruptions that will wipe out entire marine ecosystems. (If the oceans die, we die.) Vast droughts as mountain glaciers vanish. Deserts spreading because a few degrees of temperature increase cause greatly increased drying of the soil and contributes to soil erosion. Acid rain killing forests, lakes and leaching heavy metals into the water supply.

I think it is pretty ingenuous for you to say, "oh, people are not looking at the bright side". Give me a break.

Another thing, I am not trying to panic anyone. (Panic must be a favorite word with you guys.) I have seen someone who was panicked and I sincerely doubt that I could do that via remote control using only words and the internet.

You could say that I am trying to get people worried. I am trying to get people thinking about the ecology. I am trying to get people thinking about energy policy. However, alarmists who panic people are easy to dismiss, right? I bet that you will keep throwing that word 'panic' at me and hope some of it sticks.

As for the "drastic action that may not work anyway"...

Nice rhetoric. In one phrase you again frame the argument in such a way that any change is drastic and upsetting. And you cast doubts about the ability for us to succeed. No evidence or facts, of course.

Now, it is far easier to prevent a disaster than clean up after it. On one hand you are saying it will be simple to clean up this mess. ("... with a desalinization plant...") and on the other hand any attempt to fix or even moderate the problem ahead of time is drastic and might not work. I would suggest that you can't have it both ways.

If I may be so bold, let me summarize your arguments:
-- Global warming is likely not going to be a problem.
-- Any attempt to mitigate it will be disastrously expensive.
-- We can easily & cheaply fix anything that goes wrong.
-- Victims of all this (poor people else where) can go live in Antarctica or Siberia or make themselves not poor or, ...or something.
-- Major effects (such as ecosystem collapse, H2S eruptions, desertification, vast amounts of CO2 outgassing from the oceans) won't happen, or will be easy to fix if they do happen and discussing them is panic mongering in any case.

If you don't like my summary, could you please post your own?

My summary of arguments is:
-- Humans are causing the 6th large extinction event in the Earth's history. The rates of extinctions are accelerating.
-- Human caused global warming is real and is causing problems already.
-- Global warming will cause this extinction event to get worse.
-- These disruptions will cause famine, plague war and death on a planet with a whole lot of guns.
-- Modest changes would be a significant help in slowing or moderating the above.

We could compare summaries, decide what we agree on or disagree on. And then argue those points of disagreement with out ENDLESSLY repeating our arguments to the boredom of anyone reading these posts.

Repeating an argument endlessly is propaganda. It's mental spam. It just causes boredom. And if people are bored with a subject then they will watch reruns of "Sex in the City" rather than thinking, right?

I have contempt for propagandists. If you claim that your position is so strong, then from this post on, why not back it up? I am more than willing to engage you in honorable combat of references and facts.

As a start, you could document how the environmental regulations are "killing" the Europeans. That would go a long way towards shoring up a very weak point in your argument, namely that any change is too expensive.

As for all the poor people, they should change their pattern of living so they are less poor. If we worry about how they are going to hew buckets of water from the local water hole 300 years from now, there is something wrong with that assuption. Instead of worrying how they'll maintian their subsistance farm, why not work on ways to make them more economically productive rather than maintain this stupid third world "hand to mouth" existance. I've heard of people getting run over by cars as they crossed the highways to get their buckets of water. Haven't they heard of plumbing! A simple concept that's been around for thousands of years, no excuse not to have plumbing.

I leave the above, for people to consider, with out further comment.

Rick

RickSmith · 2007-11-28 04:02:00

Some things Terraformer says does appear a bit nutty. I just assume he's joking, ...

Mr Kalbfus,
I agree with you. I think he is trying to make a joke out of this debate. I saw a 'report' on YouTube where this comedian figured that having to wear a sweater in winter was terrible, so she got a big pile of spray cans (filled with PFC's or something) and sprayed them all into the air. This was to encourage global warming.

If something is a big joke, people are less likely to take it seriously. It makes sense, no.

However, I am worried about what is happening to my ecosystem, what is happening - and what may happen - to my civilization. So, I must confess, that I don't find such jokes very funny. I do expect that propagandists and oil company apologists to keep up the yuck, yucks, however.

Rick

Terraformer · 2007-11-28 07:43:56

We had a heat wave in Europe a couple summers ago that killed tens of thousands of people.

What they didn't tell you was that hundreds of thousands of peoples lives were saved by the warmer winter.

Terraformer · 2007-11-28 08:12:34

And it's interesting to note that the Heat goes up, then the CO2 level rises. Cause and effect but the greenies have got it the wrong way round.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-28 09:35:47

Rick, a debate has two sides to it. ... I prefer to have faith in human progress rather than be a pesimist and assume we'll go technologically nowhere in the next 60 years.
Hello Mr Kalbfus,
If you really meant no insult by the chicken little comparison and you are serious about your suggestions and not just bringing them up to trivialize the problems, then you have my attention.
The drying up of the aquifier, could be solved by a desalinization plant, ...
...deserts changing into grasslands...
I think you would need many desalinization plants. But let's say that taking sea water, boiling it, condensing the fresh water, pumping the fresh water up hill to the American bread basket and then moving it to individual fields takes only 10,000 times more energy than pumping water out of the aquifer. This will make the American wheat cost more, wouldn't it? If the agro-businesses can't be run for a profit they would shut down, wouldn't they? With no irrigation, and the water table dozens of meters deeper than it historically was, this area would revert to a desert, wouldn't it?
So whether it takes one desalinization plant or 100,000, I don't think this problem will be solved at the last minute. I think that when that underground lake is gone then so will the American Bread Basket.
Furthermore, how much oil and gas will be burnt to boil and move all that water? If we were making a giant push to fusion I would be less worried about the future, but look at what the Bush administration has done to fusion funding. Look at what it did to the Electric Car! Look what happened to the Magnetoplasmadynamic power plants and fission power plants. I see no indication that we are going to dump oil any time soon.

60 years is not soon! Fusion will arrive when its time comes. If fusion will arrive 60 years from now, what indications of its arrival do you expect to see now? I am only 40 years old, in another 60 years I'll be 100, I will be very surprised if we are still burning oil in 2067, I really don't expect any of us to still be around to say whether you were right or wrong, but the assumption you make is one of non-technological progress, and the other assuption you make is that everything depends on the decisions of one President of one country. If you are as you say of British Columbia, why don't you look to your own prime minister to fund these fusion programs instead of to the president of a neighboring country? I myself would like to see some fusion funding, so let me work on my president and you can work on your prime minister, but I don't think either of our countries will play such a pivital role about what's going to happen 60 years from now. Most of the greatest inventions of the 20th century didn't come from government labs but from private industry and investors, and probably for every dollar the government spends on fusion research, it wastes two on other programs. If fusion is important to us, we can spend the money and also expect some of that money to be wasted, and it is an opportunity cost, that money comes out of taxpayers pockets, and that money could have been spent on more economically productive things, but take it out of investors pockets and spend it on fusion, the return will not be great nor will it be immediate. We've spent billions of dollars on fusion already, billions that have been taken out of private pockets and could have been spent elsewhere, and you say fusion is just around the corner if we spend a few billion more? There is two ways of looking at this, either we have not spent sufficiently to realize a return, or that results aren't in immediate prospect if we spend this money here, and they way the engineers keep pushing back the date on when we'll achieve fusion, you are not going to convince many private investors to part with this money, taxpayers are not that different than private investors, they expect some results for all of their money the government has spent. A few decades and a few billion dollars later it becomes more difficult to convince taxpayers and their representatives in Congress to part with this money, they'd rather build bridges after all. I do think their are many alternatives other than fusion though, in 60 years we could have solar power satellites beaming down microwaves to power the desalinization and electrolysis plants, cars can drive through the desert burning hydrogen adding water vapor to the air and thus making the local climate a bit wetter. If the technological revolution hits us, people will be alot richer than they are today, there may not be any poor people grovelling in mud huts hauling buckets of water from the local well, when their may be robots to do their work for them, build houses, install plumbing etc. After 60 years further of the computer revolution, I think it will hardly matter whether we achieve fusion or not, there is always the Sun after all.

As for the deserts, it is far easier to make a desert than to get rid of one. How many deserts do you know of that human beings have reclaimed (perhaps with a desalinization plant). If this map shows vast desert areas turning into grass lands, then I think it is HIGHLY optimistic.

There is one in Saudi Arabia, they grow wheat there, all with desalinated water, they use a process called vacuum evaporation and condensation I believe.

[Greece was turned into a desert by over exploitation of its ecosystem. (It used to be rich forest.) The Greek government has tried for decades to reforest these lands but the soil is gone (erosion), the land is hot (which reduces local precipitation) and the country is poor (in part because it is a desert). You might spend some time reviewing how easy Greece has had it, trying to improve its ecology. And it has a desert with a fair bit of rain fall.

Not as poor as Sub-Saharan Africa which is blessed with abundant tropical rainforests and rich in natural resources, oil, diamonds, gold, you name it, still most of the people who live their are poor. I suggest Greece's problem is not so much its climate as it is its government, for much of the 20th century, Greece was run by socialists who believe in high taxes and income redistribution, this discourages investments and economic activity, Greeks are well educated, and if provided with economic opportunity, they won't be poor. It would be a disaster if they found oil anyway, because then they could just be lazy and fall back on socialism and hire a bunch of foreigners to do all their real work for them, while the government creates alot of "make work" jobs for Greek citizens.

...and did you take a look at that "Dubya" map, it shows that much of the regions where drought would occur would actually be flooded by the rising ocean, and all the evaporation from the encroaching ocean would create a wetter climate for the surrounding area, ....

Actually I didn't look at it. I think that the we will have huge problems long, LONG before the antarctic ice sheet melts. But even assuming Antarctica was ice free what does that get us? We make some reservations and dump refugees on a continent with no soil and something like 3 months of no sun. Well, I guess that that solves the main problem of which countries are going to adopt all those refugees. By the way, how many countries in the world welcomed large numbers of boat people? How many countries took thousands of poor people from the Sudan famine? These are microscopic refugee problems compared to the one you feel is so easily solved.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-28 12:13:23

Actually I didn't look at it. I think that the we will have huge problems long, LONG before the antarctic ice sheet melts. But even assuming Antarctica was ice free what does that get us? We make some reservations and dump refugees on a continent with no soil and something like 3 months of no sun. Well, I guess that that solves the main problem of which countries are going to adopt all those refugees. By the way, how many countries in the world welcomed large numbers of boat people? How many countries took thousands of poor people from the Sudan famine? These are microscopic refugee problems compared to the one you feel is so easily solved.

Do you really believe that some fine warm day in Antartica all the ice sheets are going to go "sloop" right into the ocean crating a huge tidal wave that inundates the world? I don't think slowly rising ocean levels will have the same effect as a hurricane or a tidal wave, what you will get is more meltwater than snow and the ocean will slowly rise, pieces of the ice sheet will break off and slide into the ocean, and this may cause the ocean to rise a little at a time. Environmentalists love disaster movies don't they? In a typical disaster movie, there is this lone scientist who warns the world that a disaster is coming, but no one listens to him. He goes on an one annoying all his colleages who pooh pooh his ideas and think he is some sort of a nut, the government deliberately ignores him, they shut him out of their labs, and maybe even fire him if he's on government payroll, then one fine day the disaster he predicted finally begins to happen, the government rehires him, but now its a matter of managing a disaster in progress rather than trying to prevent one.

The question I have about this scenario is how do we know which lone scientist to listen to? How do we know which one is right? Is it the one who gets the biggest media attention? Is it the one who has some friends in a certain political party? What if the scientist says, the only way we can prevent global warming is by raising gasoline taxes enormously? I can already hear those leftists licking their chops at the prospect of all that extra revenue those gas taxes would bring in, they could start day care centers for everybody, expand their food stamp program and provide universal health care covereage for everybody, and what do you know they all of the sudden get very concerned about global warming, they contact some other scientists and say, "Aren't you concerned about global warming?"
He looks at his data and says, "I don't really see a problem here."
And then the Democratic strategist says, "We'll don't you want Universal Health Care coverage? Taxes on gasoline will cover that, and heres this scientist who says we need to raise taxes on gasoline in order to prevent global warming."
The scientist says, "Let me look at those numbers again," he examines the data for a brief moment, "Oh I don't believe it! How could I have missed it. Of course we'll need more government research centers."
The Democratic strategist says, "Of course."
The scientist looks at the numbers again, "Of course here it is, by examining the numbers this way, it looks like we have a problem with global warming. Oh dear! It looks like we may be inundated by a tidal wave when the entire Antartic ice sheet slide into the water all at once! We had better raise those gas taxes immediately!"
The Democratic Strategist says, "That's the spirit ole chum, do you know any other scientists that would like new research centers and government jobs?"
"Of course," says the scientist.
"Perhaps you could contact them and furnish me with a list of them so they can may a testimony before Congress about the dire peril that Global Warming poses to the Earth." says the Democratic Strategist.
"I'll do that right away," says the scientist, they shake hands and the strategist walks out the door.

I'm not insulting anybody, I just think we shouldn't kill ourselves trying to rescue the Earth from global warming, the result doesn't look so terrible that we couldn't survive on such a changed planet, the KT extinction at the end of the Dinosaur Age looks by comparison to be much worse than what's going on now. ...
I am pretty sure that I have not suggested that we kill anyone. I have suggested that we work to minimize adding even more carbon to the air. But many people like to suggest that this noble goal is equivalent to:

I did not mean that term literally and you know that perfectly well.

-- Destroying the economy.
-- Living in the dark.
-- Beggaring ourselves.
-- Freezing in the Winter.
-- Killing ourselves.
-- Panicking. etc.

If taxes are raised and the market is overregulated possibly. What I worry about is Global Warming being used as an excuse for the government to take over the economy by raising taxes and micromanaging corporations through regulation. As we've seen in the 1970s this doesn't work, it causes stagflation. The only reason Europe is growing faster right now is because of the higher unemployment rate its starting from, but its natural rate of unemployment is higher than our because of their high taxes and regulation.

Wildly exaggerating the costs of conservation / converting to cleaner energy, so as to make it easier to dismiss the debate, does not endear you to me. In reply to either you or terraformer, I mentioned that Europe (which has very strong green political parties and environmental regulations with teeth) has an economy and currency that are growing faster than the USA. I don't recall either of you commenting on this point.

See above about Europe, and did you look at Zubrin's Energy Plan? I glanced at it, he says some form of alchol is the answer. I'd supplement that with electric/smart highways and plug in hybrid vehicles. The electric/smart highways would power the hybrids while they travel on them, and when they get off they would run on battery power and then start up their alchol powered internal combustion engine. The electric highways would be powered by some form of renewable energy, perhaps Solar, wind, or a hydroelectric dam, or even nuclear. This would have the effect of reducing greenhouse gases, or course you could also burn coal to power them. Coal electric plants are more efficient than individual internal combustion engines powering vehicles though, you could have carbon sequestration and so forth. My main concern is getting us out of using OPEC supplied petroleum though, that is my more immediate worry, I worry about terrorism and the economic effects of our oil dependency and the gyrating prices of oil. I'd rather switch to something more predictable and broadbased like coal, possibly solar if compedative, and nuclear. The cars should definitely be weened off of gasoline though. This all occurs through private enterprise, except for the electric/smart highway system. High gasoline prices due to the high demand are driving this whole search for alternate energy researches, I just don't want government taking it over and turning the whole thing into a revenue collecting scheme to fund programs that have nothing to do with energy. the figure the tax is enough to make it expensive and they use the proceeds to fund their social welfare programs. I think gasoline is expensive enough, and we don't need government to make it more expensive and get in on the take along side of OPEC.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-28 22:45:15

...
I leave the above, for people to consider, with out further comment.
Rick

I will just say that I replied to your every point in detail, but the system logged me out after a certain amount of time and the text of my reply was lost. and I don't feel like repeating it.

Dumb stupid computers and websites that are designed this way! :x

RickSmith · 2007-11-29 00:37:03

Do you really believe that some fine warm day in Antartica all the ice sheets are going to go "sloop" right into the ocean crating a huge tidal wave that inundates the world? ...
I don't think slowly rising ocean levels will have the same effect as a hurricane or a tidal wave. ...

Mr Kalbfus,
Straw man argument here. You were the one saying how great it would be for refugees to go to Antarctica. I think that if you look at ALL my posts in this thread and on the Global Warming thread, you will see me say that I think that _part_ (not all) of Greenland will lose its ice cap in the next 100 years. I have explicitly said on more than one occasion that the Antarctic ice cap is showing no signs of melting any time soon.

Anyway, you have been talking a lot about rising water levels in this thread, not I. I am concerned with more dangerous problems. Big hint. In a rational argument you are supposed to address points I actually make.

... Environmentalists love disaster movies don't they? In a typical disaster movie, ... < Everything about the imaginary disaster movie with lone scientists and democrat conspiring excised. >

.........right.

Now, what exactly does this story about your imaginary movie contribute? Besides allowing you to avoid having to deal with anything real, I mean. Are you suggesting that I base my concerns on your imaginary movie? Do you want me to invent my own imaginary movies? If you want me to ignore you as not worthy of my time because of moronic straw man arguments, then you are well on your way here.

The question I have about this scenario is how do we know which lone scientist to listen to? How do we know which one is right?

Ah. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has 3800 scientists who have contributed or reviewed the science in this report.

2007 IPCC Document

Incidentally, a number of scientists are very unhappy with this consensus paper because in order to get unanimity they had to water down the language to satisfy the Saudi Arabian scientists (also China & Russia).

Saudi & Chinese Water Down Global Warming

A quote from this report:
As UK columnist George Monbiot writes in his column today : "Global warming scientists are under intense pressure to water down findings' and are then accused of silencing their critics."

There were a number of reports about this but I picked this one because at the bottom of it, you can compare side by side the original draft and the censored draft that had been watered down to minimize the impact of the report.

For example:
The scientists wrote: "likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction,"

was rewritten as: "there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and species' ecological reactions."

So if you find the IPCC consensus report frightening, be assured, the document is UNDER-STATING the problem.

I did not mean that term [killing people] literally and you know that perfectly well.

Yes I do. However, you freely use hyperbole. Do you object when I do so as well to emphasize your tactics?

.... The only reason Europe is growing faster right now is because of the higher unemployment rate its starting from, but its natural rate of unemployment is higher than our because of their high taxes and regulation.

Ah, so we have agreement. Europe's economy is growing faster than the USA's. You did not mention this but can we also agree that their currency is doing better than the USA's?

You feel that these facts are unimportant because the two situations are not identical. (Ideally to make this a scientific experiment we would like Europe and the USA to be identical EXCEPT for their environmental policies.)

Europe is handicapped by high taxes, high unemployment, strong regulations AND strong environmental policies. The USA has none of these disadvantages.

However it could be hoped, that with all the advantages the USA enjoys, they would be able to moderate their output of green house gases and not have their economy 'killed'. Apparently Europe, with all the disadvantages that you have enumerated, can have have strong environmental regulations and their economy has not been 'killed'.

... did you look at Zubrin's Energy Plan?

Yes, that is why I brought it up. My question was, would implementing his plan (which I think is far more practical than your electric highway plan) 'kill' the USA economy?

< electric highways elided >
... Coal electric plants are more efficient than individual internal combustion engines powering vehicles though, you could have carbon sequestration and so forth.

Carbon sequestration is nonsense. We burn coal to get lots of energy. Using up vast amounts of that energy to remove the CO2 defeats the whole purpose of the power plant in the first place. One study looked at this, and concluded the best way to sequestrate the CO2 was to liquefy it and pump it to the ocean floor. What a disaster.

My main concern ... I worry about terrorism and the economic effects of our oil dependency. ...

You and I are in complete agreement here.

(Discussion of when fusion will arrive & other things elided. )
... but the assumption you make is one of non-technological progress, and the other assuption you make is that everything depends on the decisions f one President of one country. If you are as you say of British Columbia, why don't you look to your own prime minister to fund these fusion programs instead of to the president of a neighboring country?

You have completely missed my point. If your argument is that technology will save us, I was saying I would feel happier if technology was being aggressively funded. But Bush has implemented an energy policy that seems to have been written by the House Saud and cut fusion funding to the bone. Since the USA is the largest polluter of CO2 discussing USA policies is germane.

As for the private funding to produce fusion argument...

Fusion would be a gigantic economic boon. Every time historically that cheaper power arrived, human freedoms and wealth increased. And we are very close. As I discussed above, the Lawson parameter has been increased 10,000 fold in the last 1/2 century. If we can increase it just 3 more times we will have ignition and fusion power. However, as we have reached the edge of success, funding has been cut to the point that the plant that will prove it can't be built. It is an outrage. If you think we should do nothing until industry funds it, then that is just 5 more or 15 more years of waste and CO2 being pumped into my air.

... in 60 years we could have solar power satellites beaming down microwaves to power the desalinization and electrolysis plants, cars can drive through the desert burning hydrogen ...

Solar Power Satillites are an economic impossibility. See "Entering Space" By Robert Zubrin for why.

Hydrogen powered cars are impossible because of:
- the energy cost to create the hydrogen,
- the difficulty of getting it to the gas stations,
- the dangerousness of putting it in vehicles that crash,
- the dangerousness of H2 vehicles in parking garages,
- the cost of the fuel cell engines that burn it,
- the catalyst poisoning that destroys the fuel cells that use it,
- the cost of the platinum fuel cells if mass produced will soar.

See "Energy Victory" by Robert Zubrin for more reasons why the "hydrogen economy" is impossible.

Your point on Greece not having a rich government is true. But if sub Saharan Africa is so rich, why have they not reversed the growth of the Sahara?

... and one of the things that makes me take this global warming thing
less seriously is this constant obsession the proponets have for blaming
everything on George W. Bush, ...

I call them as I see them.
The current USA fusion budget is ~250 million. Who do I blame if not him and his government.

His government has stonewalled every effort to slow oil consumption.

His government sued California which introduced a law to stop pollution that was causing hundreds of deaths and thousands of asthma attacks every year. Do you not think that it is strange that protecting the auto corporations "right to choose what to sell" had a higher priority than the health of the USA citizens that his government is supposed to protect?

Who Killed the Electric Car

... Why do they think putting more of their hard earned money in the hands of the government is going to solve global warming? ...

As I said, it would be easy for you to create straw man arguments that fixing global warming would cost bla bla trillions. The exact shape of your argument is "global warming would cause gigantic growth of the government".

I challenged you to answer the question: if we implement Robert Zubrin's plan in "Energy Victory" would this 'kill' the USA economy? So, will implementing this policy cause gigantic growth of the USA government?

Rather than creating imaginary movies to shore up your arguments, and rattle on at great length about your unproven assumption that doing ANYTHING at all would result in giant growth of government, you could try answering my question.

...How much do you know about the year 1000 by the way, are their any particular leaders back then that we can blame our current problems on?
I don't think so.

Yet ANOTHER straw man argument. First, leaders 1000 years ago could not kill off entire ecosystems and change the Earth's atmosphere. Second, the whole, "George Bush won't look so bad when he is 1000 years away", argument is totally beside the point.

This is the point.

Biggest Extinction Since Dinos.

National Geographic - The Sixth Extinction

Mr Kalbfus,

Very soon, I won't bother replying to your threads. This is NOT because I think you are correct. It is because it is obvious to me and everyone that you are wasting our time. I suggest that if you want to be taken seriously, you learn to answer the points actually argued.

Rick

Antius · 2007-11-29 05:12:29

The most serious near term effects of global climate change will be changes in rainfall distribution and generally rising temperatures in large arable food producing regions. This will result in declining yields, which could have serious implications for global food prices, given that margin between supply and demand is already tight due to water shortages, rising salinity, declining topsoils, urbanisation, etc.

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-29 10:28:57

Do you really believe that some fine warm day in Antartica all the ice sheets are going to go "sloop" right into the ocean crating a huge tidal wave that inundates the world? ...
I don't think slowly rising ocean levels will have the same effect as a hurricane or a tidal wave. ...
Mr Kalbfus,
Straw man argument here. You were the one saying how great it would be for refugees to go to Antarctica. I think that if you look at ALL my posts in this thread and on the Global Warming thread, you will see me say that I think that _part_ (not all) of Greenland will lose its ice cap in the next 100 years. I have explicitly said on more than one occasion that the Antarctic ice cap is showing no signs of melting any time soon.
Anyway, you have been talking a lot about rising water levels in this thread, not I. I am concerned with more dangerous problems. Big hint. In a rational argument you are supposed to address points I actually make.

... Environmentalists love disaster movies don't they? In a typical disaster movie, ... < Everything about the imaginary disaster movie with lone scientists and democrat conspiring excised. >
.........right.
Now, what exactly does this story about your imaginary movie contribute? Besides allowing you to avoid having to deal with anything real, I mean. Are you suggesting that I base my concerns on your imaginary movie? Do you want me to invent my own imaginary movies? If you want me to ignore you as not worthy of my time because of moronic straw man arguments, then you are well on your way here.
The question I have about this scenario is how do we know which lone scientist to listen to? How do we know which one is right?
Ah. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has 3800 scientists who have contributed or reviewed the science in this report.
2007 IPCC Document
Incidentally, a number of scientists are very unhappy with this consensus paper because in order to get unanimity they had to water down the language to satisfy the Saudi Arabian scientists (also China & Russia).
Saudi & Chinese Water Down Global Warming
A quote from this report:
As UK columnist George Monbiot writes in his column today : "Global warming scientists are under intense pressure to water down findings' and are then accused of silencing their critics."
There were a number of reports about this but I picked this one because at the bottom of it, you can compare side by side the original draft and the censored draft that had been watered down to minimize the impact of the report.
For example:
The scientists wrote: "likely to be at high risk of irreversible extinction,"
was rewritten as: "there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and species' ecological reactions."
So if you find the IPCC consensus report frightening, be assured, the document is UNDER-STATING the problem.

I did not mean that term [killing people] literally and you know that perfectly well.
Yes I do. However, you freely use hyperbole. Do you object when I do so as well to emphasize your tactics?

.... The only reason Europe is growing faster right now is because of the higher unemployment rate its starting from, but its natural rate of unemployment is higher than our because of their high taxes and regulation.
Ah, so we have agreement. Europe's economy is growing faster than the USA's. You did not mention this but can we also agree that their currency is doing better than the USA's?

What difference does it make if the economy is growing faster if the unemployment starts out higher? It slows down as unemployment drops until it reaches a natural rate of unemployment and beyond that further growth becomes inflationary.

Higher taxes put a drag on the economy, that means investors look for higher returns before investing as taxes eliminate a good chunk of the return on their investment, and that means they do less investing than they do in the United States and consequently fewer people are employed in Europe percentage-wise. Europe also has a wet paper tiger foreign policy besides.

You feel that these facts are unimportant because the two situations are not identical. (Ideally to make this a scientific experiment we would like Europe and the USA to be identical EXCEPT for their environmental policies.)
Europe is handicapped by high taxes, high unemployment, strong regulations AND strong environmental policies. The USA has none of these disadvantages.
However it could be hoped, that with all the advantages the USA enjoys, they would be able to moderate their output of green house gases and not have their economy 'killed'. Apparently Europe, with all the disadvantages that you have enumerated, can have have strong environmental regulations and their economy has not been 'killed'.

It comes in degrees, each increase in taxes slows the economy a bit but doesn't necessarily kill the economy, but Democrats err on the side of higher taxes. Whenever there is a problem, they raise taxes and spend money to solve it. What happened in the 1970s is that Democrats went on a tax and spending binge and piled on taxes higher and higher until the top rate was 70%, and then they wondered why there was stagflation!

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-29 17:15:03

The most serious near term effects of global climate change will be changes in rainfall distribution and generally rising temperatures in large arable food producing regions. This will result in declining yields, which could have serious implications for global food prices, given that margin between supply and demand is already tight due to water shortages, rising salinity, declining topsoils, urbanisation, etc.

I hate to say it, but there is an easy quick fix for this, its called genetic engineering. Now we take a staple food crop such as corn or wheat and we cross it with a heat tolerant tropical plant and we got a food crop designed to be grown in the tropics, boosting the yeilds. As for pests, genetic engineering. Lack of fresh water, engineer salt tolerant food crops. It is easier to custom design specific varieties of plants to adapt to the changing environment than it is to engineer the environment. Human beings are after all tropical animals. Our ancestors evolved in tropical jungles, and evolved further in tropical savannahs as the climate grew drier.

I think people who say we will distroy ourselves because of war and famine due to the changing climate caused by global warming underestimate us a great deal, and if we are talking about living on Mars whether terraformed or not, you must admit even a warmed up Earth with its ice caps melted is a great deal more habitable than Mars. This admission doesn't "light the fire under our belly" to get us to do something about global warming, but I'd like to be honest about the whole thing. Humans are more adaptable than many other species on Earth, if we weren't, we shouldn't be talking about colonizing Mars now should we.

One assumption that I'd like to take apart is the one about the Third World always being with us no matter what we do. The Third World is shrinking, it is getting smaller, ex-third world countries are becoming more prosperous, this leaves the international investors to invest in the remaining undeveloped parts of the world. I think that by 2067, the third world will be greatly diminished if there is any bit of it left at all. The only thing holding back the third world is their governments, but the rising tide of democracy will take care of that as well. if the ocean level rises, people will move. Rick Smith is a pessimist, he assumes we will fight it out, I guess its part of his warning about global warming. I think we should chip away at global warming, we should develop alternate energy, he likes to knock down my electric highway idea, but I think he's taking it all too personally. Electricity is a conveyor or energy, and it is extremely adaptable to any source of energy, the electrons after all don't care how they are generated. Rick doubts the feasiblity of Solar Power Satellites, I know Robert Zubrin doubts them too, but what assumptions is he making about that? A space elevator might make it feasible and as for competing with ground solar power, ground solar power competes with plants for sunlight, a microwave receiver does not.

I don't think an electric highway would be all that expensive, it is a regular highway with an electric rail running down the center of each lane, put navigational beacons at regular intervals along the road and control towers and a computer system and the smart highway can maneuver individual cars allowing cars that want to exit to exit, anticipating all delays well ahead of time, for instance spacing themselves out and maneuvering into one lane to avoid construction without even slowing down. This Autodrive takes the burden of driving off of the driver, and allows him to relax, take a nap, tie his shoes, eat a snack or a meal or even chat on the phone for the duration that his car is on the highway.
For this convenience alone smart highways will be very popular, and while we are installing these, why not have these same highways power the cars as well?

Small internal combustion engines are very inefficient compared to large-scale power generation plants, and this doesn't matter whether they burn alchohol or gasoline. Hydrogen fuel cells are expensive because they require platinum parts, leave it to the engineers to figure out how to make them safe, with smart highways though collisions will be rare. I want to remove the human driver as a factor as much as possible. Humans are fallable, and computers don't get drunk or distracted.

I think we will work things out in the future, and I don't think it all has to be figured out right now, we just work on a little piece at a time. We've got plenty of time, its not like an immenant asteroid collision with Earth for instance.

RickSmith · 2007-11-30 07:23:04

There is one in Saudi Arabia, they grow wheat there, all with desalinated water, they use a process called vacuum evaporation and condensation I believe.

Does this single plant water an area the size of the American Bread Basket? I would assume not. Exactly how big is this farm that they water with this one plant?

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-30 07:39:41

That's just a sign that they have too much oil profits. Saudi Arabia is mostly desert, they don't need too many people to pump the oil out of the ground, so in the mean time they have to give the rest of the Saudis something to do, so they had some desalination plants built, and they are powered by all the excess natural gas from their oil drilling, as they have nothing better to do with it, they use it to power the desalinization plants which supply most of the water to the Saudis and help sustain their farms.

There are other ways to desalinate water too, one method involves using an OTEC plant, which harnesses the temperature differences between the upper layers of ocean water and the deep layers where the temperature hovers just a few degrees above freezing. Liquid ammonia will boil at the temperature of the upper layers, and the ammonia vapor drives a turbine and generates electricity. This is another form of Solar energy by the way. The Sun warms the upper layers of the ocean, while cold water is denser and sinks, and unlike wind power, this source of energy is fairly constant in the tropics. In the tropics the upper ocean stays around 80 degrees, unlike temperate regions where the therma gradient flattens out in winter. Alot of people live in the tropics, so it is fairly useful for people living near deep oceans, and its better than them starting coal powered generating plants.

RickSmith · 2007-11-30 07:49:44

[
It comes in degrees, each increase in taxes slows the economy a bit but doesn't necessarily kill the economy, ...

Mr Kalbfus.
You can't have it both ways. Either, the costs of reducing carbon emissions are sufficiently minor that Europe can do so with out 'killing' their economy or they are not. You have said in a blanket statement that doing anything about reducing CO2 emission would 'kill' the economy. I have zoned in on this and challenged you. You have replied that Europe's economy is in rough shape.

Now above you are talking about 'degrees'. Is that a reversal of your blanket statement that any CO2 reduction would 'kill' the economy? If so, please be honest enough to admit it and stop wasting our time. If not, I'll continue with my argument.

As for your argument, let us say that you're right. Just for argument's sake we will assume that Europe's economy is REALLY (as you assure us) in terrible shape. The US currency is REALLY not dropping like a stone against the Euro. OK, let us accept that.

Now that we are on the same side here, as far as Europe goes, let us look at the main point that you seem to have missed.

Please read the following:

Roberta Nichols & Flex Fuel Vehicles

Would implementing this policy (which would significantly reduce green house emissions in the USA) 'kill' the USA economy?

If you feel the answer is 'yes' then why not support your argument with a few facts and explain HOW this policy would 'kill' the USA economy.

If your answer is 'no', then perhaps you will refrain in the future against making blanket attacks on those trying to reduce carbon emissions with statements which are obviously and demonstratively untrue.

Rick

Tom Kalbfus · 2007-11-30 09:09:29

Read my posts a little more carefully. What I am basically saying is that I don't like hasty approaches, I don't like big government solutions. Maybe your confusing me with the other poster. I didn't say there was no global warming. I think it is desirable to do something about it, but I also think global warming is something we can live with too, its not as dire as a 5 mile wide asteroid hitting the Earth. I think some of the pronosticators can be accused of hyperbole, they want to get us all scared about Global Warming so that we do something about it. I want to do something about it, but I don't want excessive gas taxes of government regulation, I'm against those approaches. Even Zubrin is against gas taxes, he says making gasoline more expensive or improving the efficiency of our cars doesn't cut our dependence on gasoline and that the oil cartels can simply raise their prices and we'd be back to square one.

My problem with Europe is that it goes the regulatory and taxation route, the governments there actually become a partner with OPEC by taking some of the revenue from gasoline sales right out of the consumer's pocket. Europe also has had high gas taxes for decades, they have smaller more fuel-efficient cars, but they still run on fossil fuels, all the Europeans have accomplished was to make their government bigger. I don't see many European cars running on Ethenol 85, or hydrogen, they still use gas or that stinky Deisel fuel, I call them "Fart mobiles" you can always tell when one of them is driving in front of you because you then start smelling rotten eggs.

I think hybrids are a good direction, because with that the car companies start putting electric motors in their vehicles, and once cars start using electricty, there are many ways to generate that electricity, and this opens up the possibility of cars drawing current from the highways they drive on. We spend billions of dollars upgrading and maintianing our highways anyway. Now their is a fleet of vehicles running on electricity at least part of the time, all we have to do is supply the right sort of highway, and car companies will adapt their next line of hybrids to them. I've heard this idea of the smart highway kicking around for some time now. With GPS receivers it becomes possible to locate cars quite accurately. What if we altered these GPS recievers to receive signals from the highway itself, this will locate each car very precisely on the highway, and if you know the location of each car, the cars can then be controlled remotely by signals from the highway itself. This concept is the smart highway system, it would reduce traffic jams and accidents caused by human error. Now if the Department of Transportation is going to upgrade our highways to a smart highway system, why not also make them electric highways at the same time. All this money would come out of highway funds, in part paid for by tolls, the existing gas taxes etc. Those cars that draw electricity from the highway would also have electric meters and EZ-Pass accounts. The highways would intern be connecting to the electric grid, and each car owner would pay their utilities for the electricity to drive their car either out of their EZ-Passes or as part of their household account. Electricity is cheaper than gasoline and is generated more efficiently than the energy generated by automotive internal combustion engines. If you go off the highways, then you burn gasoline, ethenol 85, hydrogen or whatever.

Terraformer · 2007-11-30 12:50:45

We don't actually have to worry about rising sea levels after all. I googled 'rising sea levels' and all I got was predictions. Islands that are sinking are claiming they are the victim of Climate Change. Am I really meant to take this seriously?

noosfractal · 2007-11-30 17:43:29

Terraformer · 2007-12-01 06:01:03

So? That graph still works against the Climate Change greenies. As you can sea, the sea level was rising before humans started pumping loads of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Where did you get that graph from anyway? Are you sure the island/port it was taken from isn't just sinking? 'Scientists' have done that before.

JoshNH4H · 2007-12-01 08:06:47

the industrial revolution started in 1850, i's say 70 years would be a sufficiently long time to have sea level rise, let's compare that to a picture of CO2 levels.

JoshNH4H · 2007-12-01 08:16:31

compared to

The numbers on the right are ppm of CO2, the ones on the left are average temp. anomaly. Although it's down half of the time, that is because they're using the average temperature on this graph as the no change point, when it should, in my opinion, be right at 1880, where the temp. has the same average for a few years.

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#26 2007-11-26 04:25:43

Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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Re: Terraforming techniques to combat global warming

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