For Those Who Fear Global Warming, Please Read... - Page 3

dalem · 02-09-2008, 00:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parihaka

And don't forget if the carbon taxes apply to food, hundreds of millions of lives.

Good point.

-dale

gunnut · 02-09-2008, 01:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brokensickle

Gun,

Wonderfully said.

Ivan

Thank you. I found it very ironic that many of those who ridicule religious people for using this line of reasoning somehow uses this line of reasoning when trying to convince us about global warming. The first time I heard this I was quite awestruck.

dalem · 02-09-2008, 05:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunnut

Thank you. I found it very ironic that many of those who ridicule religious people for using this line of reasoning somehow uses this line of reasoning when trying to convince us about global warming. The first time I heard this I was quite awestruck.

You can use the Flying Spaghetti Monster logic on the global warming religion and it works perfectly.

-dale

zraver · 02-10-2008, 14:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dalem

I'm trying. You keep talking about pollution when I'm talking about "global warming".

-dale

if we use Global warming as the in to fix the pollution problem then so be it we still win.

Gunnut,

Quote:

Do you believe in any deity? If not, why not?

I am a believer, you will even see references in my posts with words like stewardship etc. I do not believe the creator put us here to spew smoke and chemicals

Quote:

If it's not real, you don't lose anything. If it is real, you gain favor in your after life.

If Climate change isn't real we don't lose anything, if it is we stand to gain. There is profit and benefit in reducing emissions.

dalem · 02-10-2008, 17:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

if we use Global warming as the in to fix the pollution problem then so be it we still win.

But the reactions and "fixes" for the global warming fakery have nothing to do with pollution.

I am not interested in performing Pascal's Wager with MY tax dollars and economy, thank you very much.

-dale

gunnut · 02-10-2008, 17:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

If Climate change isn't real we don't lose anything, if it is we stand to gain. There is profit and benefit in reducing emissions.

But at what cost? I'm not saying we should have wanton pollution of our environment. I'm saying the current hysteria will make people jump into immature technology with needless government mandates that do nothing but hamper real progress.

Over the past 10 years the US has seen a decrease in per capita emission, all without signing the stupid Kyoto Protocol. People take it upon themselves to spend a little bit more money for a little bit extra efficiency. We see a huge adoption of hybrid vehicles. We see small cars making a come back. People started using compact florecent bulbs. All of these things people did out of their own free will with no government mandate. That's progress. Government mandates will just rush us into problems after problems. Why do we rely so much on coal fire power plants? Because nuclear was banned by environmentalists in the 1970s. I fully blame the tree huggers for the so called global warming problem right now.

zraver · 02-10-2008, 19:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunnut

But at what cost?

more like at what profit. If America is the one to develop efficient and affordable carbon scrubbers for coal plants, new reactor technology, new automotive technologies etc we can sell them to other nations.

Quote:

I'm not saying we should have wanton pollution of our environment. I'm saying the current hysteria will make people jump into immature technology with needless government mandates that do nothing but hamper real progress.

Mandates are a two edged sword thats for sure. the current pressure to use corn alone as a bio fuel is a building disaster as a case in point. But the other side of the blade is when we need mandates because industry has failed to respond like lead in gasoline and paint. It seems to me the Government does not do best when saying you must use a certain technology, but when we can no longer use old technologies. lets mandate the death of new gasoline only cars in 10 years and let the market find its replacement. lets mandate that coal fired power plants must shut down in 10 years unless they reduce emissions by 90% and let the market find a solution.

Over the past 10 years the US has seen a decrease in per capita emission, all without signing the stupid Kyoto Protocol. People take it upon themselves to spend a little bit more money for a little bit extra efficiency. We see a huge adoption of hybrid vehicles. We see small cars making a come back. People started using compact florecent bulbs. All of these things people did out of their own free will with no government mandate. That's progress. Government mandates will just rush us into problems after problems. Why do we rely so much on coal fire power plants? Because nuclear was banned by environmentalists in the 1970s. I fully blame the tree huggers for the so called global warming problem right now.[/quote]

dalem · 02-10-2008, 20:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

more like at what profit. If America is the one to develop efficient and affordable carbon scrubbers for coal plants, new reactor technology, new automotive technologies etc we can sell them to other nations.

For what? For scrubbing Carbon that doesn't need to be scrubbed? You want to subsidize an industry that is guaranteed to lose money?

Quote:

Mandates are a two edged sword thats for sure. the current pressure to use corn alone as a bio fuel is a building disaster as a case in point. But the other side of the blade is when we need mandates because industry has failed to respond like lead in gasoline and paint. It seems to me the Government does not do best when saying you must use a certain technology, but when we can no longer use old technologies. lets mandate the death of new gasoline only cars in 10 years and let the market find its replacement. lets mandate that coal fired power plants must shut down in 10 years unless they reduce emissions by 90% and let the market find a solution.

Instead, let's mandate that anyone who thinks coal emissions should be cut by 90% undergo an immediate psychological evaluation. Because that's crazy.

May the Universe preserve us from more government mandates.

-dale

**Shek** · 02-11-2008, 22:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

more like at what profit. If America is the one to develop efficient and affordable carbon scrubbers for coal plants, new reactor technology, new automotive technologies etc we can sell them to other nations.

Is Robert Byrd, Senator, West Virginia going to sponsor the scrubber bill, again?

Quote:

Russell Roberts, Pigs Don't Fly, The Economic Way of Thinking about Politics: Library of Economics and Liberty

In the 1970s, sulfur dioxide released by the smokestacks of American midwestern utility companies created acid rain in the American northeast. A clamor arose to clean up the air—environmentalists and everyday citizens demanded legislation. That should have been relatively easy. We know how to get less of something—make it more costly. So the cheapest solution to the sulfur dioxide problem would have been to tax smokestack emissions. That would give utilities the incentive to find the cheapest way to reduce emissions. Over time, better and better technologies would be developed as a way to reduce the burden of the tax.

But Congress didn't impose a tax. Congress imposed a technology. The 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act required every utility to put a scrubber on its smokestacks. These were incredibly expensive—about $100 million each. They made the air cleaner. They also made the makers of smokestacks richer. The makers of scrubbers were the bootleggers. They joined environmental groups in lobbying for the legislation. That's not so bad. Maybe scrubbers were the best technology and even if a tax had been put in place, the scrubber makers would have profited.

But the real bootleggers were the West Virginia coal companies. If a tax had been used to reduce sulfur dioxide emission, there would have been an incentive to clean up the air. One way to clean up the air is to use technology like a scrubber. A second way is to burn cleaner coal. Cleaner coal (low in sulfur) comes from out West. Dirty coal (high in sulfur) comes from West Virginia. Senator Byrd is from West Virginia. He made sure that scrubbers were mandated. For the environment of course. For cleaner air, of course. For the children, no doubt. But also for his friends in the coal business. We got cleaner air, but we achieved it at a much higher price than was necessary.

zraver · 02-11-2008, 22:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shek

Is Robert Byrd, Senator, West Virginia going to sponsor the scrubber bill, again?

Shek, thats not fair, I am for results, not a particular technology. If it works then let it compete with other ideas that work- but get something that works.

**Shek** · 02-11-2008, 22:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

Shek, thats not fair, I am for results, not a particular technology. If it works then let it compete with other ideas that work- but get something that works.

The question remains one of incentives. If it is profitable, there's plenty enough capital in the US to make it progress from an idea to a reality in the private markets. The government doesn't have the same incentives since it's gambling with our money, not theirs, and so you rarely see government success stories.

zraver · 02-12-2008, 15:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shek

The question remains one of incentives. If it is profitable, there's plenty enough capital in the US to make it progress from an idea to a reality in the private markets. The government doesn't have the same incentives since it's gambling with our money, not theirs, and so you rarely see government success stories.

National parks, Clean Air Act, Love Canal, the stories are out there Government can work.

**Shek** · 02-12-2008, 16:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zraver

National parks, Clean Air Act, Love Canal, the stories are out there Government can work.

The same Clean Air Act where Robert Byrd, Senator, West Virginia, mandated coal scrubbers instead of letting the market identify the most efficient way to reduce pollution?

We're talking two different things. I agree that the government has a role in alleviating market failures, i.e., externalities. However, the government can do this is efficient or inefficient ways, and regulatory mandates tend to be inefficient.

If the ethanol mandates for 2022 were in place today, we'd have to import corn just to make ethanol, and that's before we even start feeding cattle, pigs, humans, etc. CAFE standards made the roads more dangerous while failing to improve gas mileage all that much. Technology is just another area where the government tends not to get it right, or when they do stumble upon some important discoveries, it still takes years and the private market to bring the discovery into mainstream use.

Calling on the government to mandate technologies in hopes of finding a winner to sell to the world (strategic trade) lost vogue over a decade ago when it turned out not to work so well. Just ask Britain and France how much they made on the Concorde.

gunnut · 02-14-2008, 18:54 PM

Quote:

Last Updated: Tuesday, 12 February 2008, 16:32 GMT

Global warming 'may cut deaths'

The risk of a fatal heatwave in the UK within ten years is high, but overall global warming may mean fewer deaths due to temperature, a report says.

A seriously hot summer between now and 2017 could claim more than 6,000 lives, the Department of Health report warns.

But it also stresses that milder winters mean deaths during this time of year - which far outstrip heat-related mortality - will continue to decline.

The report is to help health services prepare for climate change effects.

A panel of scientific experts commissioned by the Department of Health and Health Protection Agency (HPA) has looked at the way the UK has responded to rising temperatures since the 1970s, and how the risks are likely to change.

While summers in the UK became warmer in the period 1971 - 2003, there was no change in heat-related deaths, but annual cold-related mortality fell by 3% as winters became milder - so overall fewer people died as a result of extreme temperatures.

Rather than physiological changes explaining our ability to adapt to rising temperatures, the report puts this down primarily to lifestyle alterations - our readiness to wear more informal clothes, for instance, and the shift away from manual labour.

Breathing in

Nevertheless, there is at present a 25% chance that by 2017 south-east England will see a severe heatwave which could cause 3,000 immediate deaths and the same number of heat-related deaths throughout the summer.

While the authors acknowledge that predicting heatwaves and their effects is difficult, the risk was nonetheless "high".

However, even 6,000 deaths pales in comparison with the number of cold-related deaths, which in the UK currently average about 20,000 per year.

It is also a mixed picture when it comes to the health impact of air pollution.

As a result of regulations, levels of several key pollutants are likely to decline over the next 50 years, but the concentration of ozone may well increase.

This is associated with breathing difficulties, particularly for asthmatics and those with existing lung problems, and could lead to 1,500 extra hospital admissions and deaths every year.

Skin cancer meanwhile is also likely to increase, although there are studies which suggest greater exposure to sunlight may prevent other forms of cancer.

Other areas which had caused concern may transpire not to be as worrying as initially thought.

A reappraisal of the evidence suggests malaria outbreaks are likely to remain rare, although health authorities need to be alert to outbreaks in continental Europe which could affect travellers, the report says.

However, while vector-borne diseases may not be the problem once thought, food-borne ones remain an issue: improved food hygiene will be necessary to prevent a 14.5% increase in food poisoning by bacteria such as Salmonella, which is affected by rising temperature.

More work ahead

Sudden periods of heavy rain may well increase the risk of flooding in some places although certain types of flooding - notably those linked to melting snow - may become less common.

While flooding is traumatic for those affected, it causes few direct deaths. Relatively little is known about the total health effects of a flood, and more work is needed, the report adds.

However heavy rain over a short period can certainly increase the amount of bacteria in surface drinking water, while increasing temperatures may stop current disinfection methods from working properly - a challenge which needs to be addressed.

"Climate change poses great challenges and it is important to plan ahead for the health consequences," said Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo.

"Let's not forget we also have a societal role to play in the mitigation of climate change by supporting sustainable development programmes - through consumer choice, reducing our carbon footprints and recycling waste."

Gill Morgan, head of the NHS Federation, said the country's health service "has a major role to play in tackling climate change".

"As the report highlights, rising temperatures will put significant pressure on the NHS, and may increase the amount of heat-related deaths and skins cancers, as well as respiratory and insect-borne diseases."

BBC NEWS | Health | Global warming 'may cut deaths'

reasonmclucus · 02-23-2008, 00:02 AM

The article has one flaw in that it accepts the basic idea that trapping low energy naturally occurring IR can cause heating. The idea was disproved a century ago by the inventor of IR photography R. W. Wood.

Quote:

Originally Posted by R.W.Wood

There appears to be a widespread belief that the comparatively high temperature produced within a closed space covered with glass, exposed to solar radiation, results from a transformation of wave-length, that is, that the heat waves from the Sun, which are able to penetrate the glass, fall upon the walls of the enclosure and raise its temperature: the heat energy is re-emitted by the walls in the form of much longer waves, which are unable to penetrate the glass, the greenhouse acting as a radiation trap.

I have always felt some doubt as to whether this action played any very large part in the elevation of temperature. It appeared much more probable that the part played by the glass was the prevention of the escape of the warm air heated by the ground within the enclosure. If we open the doors of a greenhouse on a cold windy day, the trapping of radiation appears to lose much of its efficacy. As a matter of fact I am of the opinon that a greenhouse made of a glass transparent to waves of every possible length would show a temperature nearly, if not quite, as high as that observed in a glass house. The transparent screen allows the solar radiation to warm the ground, and the ground in turn warms the air, but only the limited amount within the enclosure. In the "open", the ground is continually brought into contact with cold air by convection currents.

To test the matter I constructed two enclosures of dead black cardboard, one covered with a glass plate, the other with a plate of rock-salt of equal thickness. The bulb of a thermometer was inserted in each enclosure and the whole packed in cotton, with the exception of the transparent plates which were exposed. When exposed to sunlight the temperature rose gradually to 65 C, the enclosure covered with the salt plate keeping a little ahead of the other, owing to the fact that transmitted the longer waves from the Sun, which were stopped by the glass. In order to eliminate this action the sunlight was first passed through a glass plate.

There was now scarcely a difference of one degree between the temperatures of the two enclosures. The maximum temperature reached was about 55 C. From what we know about the distribution of energy in the spectrum of the radiation emitted by a body at 55 C, it is clear that the rock-salt plate is capable of transmitting practically all of it,while the glass plate stops it entirely. This shows us that the loss of temperature of the ground by radiation is very small in comparison to the loss by convection. in other words that we gain very little from the circumstance that the radiation is trapped.

Is it therefore necessary to pay attention to trapped radiation in deducing the temperature of a planet as affected by its atmosphere? The solar rays penetrate the atmosphere. warm the ground which in turn warms the atmosphere by contact and by convection currents. The heat received is thus stored up in the atmosphere, remaining there on account of the very low radiating power of a gas. It seems to me very doubtful if the atmosphere is warmed to any great extent by absorbing the radiation from the ground even under the most favorable conditions.

R. W. Wood: Note on the Theory of the Greenhouse

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