Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

miniTAX wrote:

It happens that nuclear is by chance a good solution to the GW NON-problem, so since the Brits get hysterical about a self-created problem (GW), they should adopt this, that was my point.

If you think GW is a non-problem, then its you who've got a problem.

miniTAX wrote:

There is no energy shortage, even with resource scarce GB (they have plenty of coal).

No energy shortage? Seen any oil company advert recently?

miniTAX wrote:

There is an energy problem,

er you just said there was no energy shortage...

miniTAX wrote:

created by the statists themselves to justify more state intervention and planification.

thats just ridiculous.

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Quote:

We won't run out of energy. Whenever we run out of the other, we will have shifted to something else...

Such as?

The Russians are talking about collecting He3 from the surface of the moon and combining it with deuterium in a rather neat fusion reaction on earth. It might be possible to do this. But its not going to fill your tank tomorrow is it? I find such complacency quite frightening.

American petroleum powered the tanks and aircraft that won WW2 for the allies. Germany lost their last big chance at the battle of the Ardennes because they ran short of fuel.

Now America imports nearly 60% of its daily oil requirement. All non OPEC countries have passed their peak oil production. Something like 2/3 of the remaining petroleum reserves are in the middle east. And you probably think the US invaded Iraq because Saddam had wmd.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

I'm not that certain re (new) nuclear power stations but otherwise agree with Steve.

Of course we could care about the climate change on other planets - but I shouldn't we look at our own frontdoor before that?

And, indeed, climate changes always have happened (and will happen, I suppose). But why shouldn't we try to reduce the fatal results if possible? Especially, when such saves a lot of money for the private household, improves the environment and make our world a bit healthier?

I don't like sitting around, saying to myself that I can't change it and that such unfortunately just happens - especially, when I have the change to try to alter it.

But that really is just my< personal view. And - partly at least - that of the US administration I've learnt today.

We are just as likely to be approaching yet another ice age as a warming trend. How will you know what to do?

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georgeob1 wrote:

We are just as likely to be approaching yet another ice age as a warming trend. How will you know what to do?

Well, in that case I must admit that my life experience counts here a lot.

And by that, I truely tend to believe more in a climate change towards warming than getting colder.

But since I'm a few years younger than you are, George, your experience certainly might be different.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
We are just as likely to be approaching yet another ice age as a warming trend. How will you know what to do?

Well, in that case I must admit that my life experience counts here a lot.

And by that, I truely tend to believe more in a climate change towards warming than getting colder.

But since I'm a few years younger than you are, George, your experience certainly might be different.

yeah he was probably around at the last ice age Smile

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Re nuclear power, I think its an indication of just how serious the energy problem is that governments all over the place are looking to build more nuclear plants. They are very far from the perfect solution. They dont even qualify as zero carbon, because a great deal of CO2 is generated by their construction and in decommissioning, all of which should be taken into account over the lifetime of the plant.

Accidents are always a possibility, though improvements in design and operating procedures should make another Chernobyl all but impossible. However, the more nuclear stations there are, the more chance there is of something going wrong.

But more worrying is the proliferation of nuclear materials, in particular plutonium. Plutonium in the hands of al Qaida is the nightmare...

And we still have no really good solution to the disposal of highly radioactive waste. Burying it in the subduction zone of a tectonic plate sounds ok, but its hardly ideal.

Of course if we could get it off the planet and lob it towards the sun, that would be much better. Problem with that is you would need a highly reliable rocket system before you trust it with a few tons of nuclear waste.

But there is an idea which might just work...not as crazy as it seems at first. With new materials for construction such as carbon nano tubes, it might be possible to build the Space Elevator and gently and cheaply lift nuclear waste into space. Arthur C Clarke said it would be built approx. 50 years after everyone stopped laughing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

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Steve 41oo wrote:

Re nuclear power, I think its an indication of just how serious the energy problem is that governments all over the place are looking to build more nuclear plants. They are very far from the perfect solution. They dont even qualify as zero carbon, because a great deal of CO2 is generated by their construction and in decommissioning, all of which should be taken into account over the lifetime of the plant.

Do you suppose that vast arrays of solar panels can be constructed without the production of CO2?

Medal fabrication and concrete construction involve some CO2 generation, whether they are used to build roads, office buildings for environmental police, gas turbine electrical power generators, or nuclear power plants. Nothing man made is a zero carbon process.

Apparently you are arguing for the extermination of mankind.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:
We are just as likely to be approaching yet another ice age as a warming trend. How will you know what to do?

Well, in that case I must admit that my life experience counts here a lot.

And by that, I truely tend to believe more in a climate change towards warming than getting colder.

But since I'm a few years younger than you are, George, your experience certainly might be different.

It's true Walter, I am probably older than you - wiser too. However, I believe you were alive during the most recent period of global cooling from 1947 to 1972.

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Steve 41oo wrote:

American petroleum powered the tanks and aircraft that won WW2 for the allies. Germany lost their last big chance at the battle of the Ardennes because they ran short of fuel.

The Germans lost because the ran short of fuel, said the peakoilist
They lost because they ran short of manpower, said the demographer
They lost because they ran short of weapons, said the gun lover
They lost because they ran short of warm clothes said the fashion designer... Rolling Eyes

When your only tool is a hammer, all things appear like a nail.

Steve 41oo wrote:

Now America imports nearly 60% of its daily oil requirement. All non OPEC countries have passed their peak oil production.

Europe import 90% of its oil, Japan 100%, so what ? As to ALL non OPEC countries passing their peak, that's a ludicrous claim and I don't know what your sources are. Brazil has just started tapping in its huge off-shore fields. Mexico has plenty of "non conventional" oil.
BTW, for years, the peakoilist like Campbell or Laherrere or Simmons were peddling their "peak-oil" doom porn. Want to see the cemetary the stupidest predictions of peak-oilers ? Just look at http://trendlines.ca/energy.htm

Steve 41oo wrote:

And you probably think the US invaded Iraq because Saddam had wmd.

Maybe Bush was just applying the precautionary principle, like the warmers who want to take preventive action against GW Rolling Eyes

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Steve 41oo wrote:

And we still have no really good solution to the disposal of highly radioactive waste. Burying it in the subduction zone of a tectonic plate sounds ok, but its hardly ideal.

Of course if we could get it off the planet and lob it towards the sun, that would be much better. Problem with that is you would need a highly reliable rocket system before you trust it with a few tons of nuclear waste.

You are constantly repeating à la WWF the "problem" of nuclear waste. Have you calculated the volume of all US waste (or French waste which is much smaller due to the recycling choice) after more than 30 years of civil energy production ?
If you don't have the numbers right, your reasonning will be incorrect.

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hamburger wrote:

reminds me of the following newspaper story :

Quote:
farmer smith was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm while praying and died shortly thereafter .
editor's advice : don't pray during a thunderstorm unless you want to wind up like farmer smith !

following minitax's advice , should we also cut down as many trees as possible , because if not , some people might not have a job ?
hbg

You were just using anecdotal evidence, hbg.
The poorest and the most environmentally harmfull countries are also countries which use the less energy and fossil fuels.
Europe and America cut down their forests at huge paces up until the 1900s. Now that they are richer, thanks to fossil fuel, they can give back land to the wilderness, make natural reserves, preserve species (forested area increases every year in the Northern hemisphere, be it in N America, Europe or Asia).
These are facts, check out the numbers.

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miniTAX wrote:

These are facts, check out the numbers.

It isn't difficult to do when you just have so - relatively - few forest left, isn't it? Laughing

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Steve 41oo wrote:

Really? Britain is responsible for changing the worlds climate and the forthcoming energy crisis? I dont think we are solely to blame

No, there is no climate crisis other than the one in your head. There will be indeed an energy crisis in GB, even more if you are really serious in complying with Kyoto, but not in other parts of Europe, not in France. And certainly not in the US, China or Australia.

"The European Union has established by fiat that a two-degree rise in global temperatures would be quite dangerous. However, this data is not scientifically sound" Yuri Izrael, Vice Chairman of the IPCC

Steve 41oo wrote:

No its not. Stopping climate change is not possible. We have to do all we can not to make it any worse

So you would disagree with the activist campaign "stop climate change" or with Margaret Beckett who said "we need to show that tackling climate change is about saving the human" or "we must form a collective effort to achieve climate security" or with Miliband's endorsement of the campaign "stop climate chaos" ?

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

miniTAX wrote:

These are facts, check out the numbers.

It isn't difficult to do when you just have so - relatively - few forest left, isn't it?

It's difficult when the country is poor and not relative to the already deforested land. When you have no fertilizer for intensive and ultraproductive agriculture, no animal food source other than grazing, no burning fuel other than wood, the pressure on nature is intense and the forest shrinks. That's what happens to many African countries, to Madagascar (I was there, the damage done to its forest to feed people is heart wrenching), to Haiti, to many parts of Indonesia or the Philipines.
On the contrary, the advance of forests in the Nord hemisphere is a fact, not a very known fact to the general public and an inconvenient truth for the environmental activists (like the fact that atmospheric pollution has greatly decreased in rich industrialized countries).

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miniTAX wrote:

On the contrary, the advance of forests in the Nord hemisphere is a fact, not a very known fact to the general public and an inconvenient truth for the environmental activists (like the fact that atmospheric pollution has greatly decreased in rich industrialized countries).

Since Germany is in the northern hemisphere - and I've most knowledge about my country only - this remark is - at the least - ignorant of what actually happens.

(In Germany 29 % of the territory are covered with forest [out of which 70% are used commercially].)

I have my sincere doubts about it ingeneraliter as well - you certainly can provide sources, can't you, miniTAX?

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minitax, you accused the British of being hysterical, but I detect a note of hysteria in your posts of late, even if not hysterically funny.

First, no one doubts peak oil anymore. Governments dont. Oil companies dont, and an increasing number of the general public dont. Its just the timing that is in doubt. It ranges from NOW to 2030 or so, depending on who you listen to. Its the sort of phenomenum we cant predict precisely, and probably wont be able to pin it down until we have passed it. But even so, 25 years is not a long time ahead.

A few "flat earth" economists still believe oil supply is dependent on demand and price, but petroleum geologists know better.

As for GW being a figment of my imagination, or whatever it was you said, that is rather typical of some of the silly things you have been coming out with lately.

George, you are of course correct that all human activity generates CO2. The manufacture and fabricating of concrete structures generates a lot. As does the manufacture of solar panels or whatever. All I was saying is that to get an accurate measure of the carbon footprint of any endeavour, you have to take into account not only the carbon dioxide produced during its lifetime, but also the CO2 generated in building or manufacture and in disposal or decommissioning.

I was not arguing for the extermination of mankind.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

(In Germany 29 % of the territory are covered with forest [out of which 70% are used commercially].)

Just looked up some forestry-operation-history sources (that's an advantage when you sit in an univeristy library :wink: ):
the above numbers are about the same as ther were at the end of 14th century.
With one main difference: now we have got mostly fast growing fir trees instead of the original beech and oak tree forest.

New forests haven't been planned since ages .... exactly since 18th century.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

the above numbers are about the same as ther were at the end of 14th century.
With one main difference: now we have got mostly fast growing fir trees instead of the original beech and oak tree forest.

New forests haven't been planned since ages .... exactly since 18th century.

Walter, the fact that the forest surface is now the same than in the 14th century (which I seriously doubt) does not refute my claim that it has dramatically shrunk up until the start of 20th century.
It reminds me of the high school German classes where I was told that "reuth" is in the name of plenties of places in Germany, the most famous being Bayreuth, "reuth" meaning a"clearing" or a place removed of its trees. And all over Europe, you have the same suffix: reid or ried in the south or England, rode, rade in the North (roed in Denmark). Massive deforestation in preindustrial Europe or North America is not a myth but was real.

As to the forested land, here is my source : it doesn't show long series but you can easily see nearly all rich northern countries have increased the forest percentage over the past years... with the notable exception of Germany, maybe because you chose to use more renewable or organic food, who knows :wink:
BTW, GB has only 10% of forested land. Maybe that's why they get so worried about the environnement Laughing

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Steve 41oo wrote:

First, no one doubts peak oil anymore. Governments dont. Oil companies dont

Those are ludicrous claims you can only find on peak oil web sites. Show us a single oil company document or a government (from the energy department, the ones who know what they talk about) official declaration which support what you said. If you can't, what you say is just what peakoiler have repeated for nearly 20 years : unfounded hysteria from people with a near religious attraction for catastrophy propheties. (I gave earlier a link to trendline.ca which has plotted different prediction from EIA, IEA, Total, Exxon...).

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Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

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