Flying by Air- the carbon footprint

[Guest]

(katoeylover @ Mar. 21 2007,19:38) Unfortunately it has been PROVED that other forms of energy, ie wind and seapower, are both more initially expensive and less efficient as an energy source.

By forcingthe third world nations into these types of power, then it is hindering there chance of progressing into world markets.

Proved by whom KL?

I find all this debate quite amusing to be honest. Simple questions to ask yourselves are we experiencing a major change in our climate and weather patterns. Well my personal opinion is yes as I see it where I live.

Most people in my area at least that I have spoken to share my experience.

I wonder can we all agree on this?

The other question is have we in any way contributed to this. I have read many varying opinions on this, but the majority seem to think we have had a hand in this.

The next question is can we do anything about it? Well again from the varying opions I have read is that we should at least try. The debate seems to be more about whether it is economically viable to reduce carbon emissions etc. I know many might call me a dramatist but without a planet what good is a economy?

[Guest]

Answer in two parts:

1) Third world countries need shitty, dirty, industrial activity and power the most. They will cycle through this phase on their way toward technological modernism. The benefit of petroleum is it's so goddam cheap. If it weren't we'd be using whatever the other thing is that's cheaper.

2) Restriction of any upstream market will hurt everyone on the economic ladder below them. Money from first world countries, and pinnacle western civilization, and technologically modern societies forms the basis for third world development. There is not enough demand in third world countries to support growth.

As you increase wealth building, two things happen:
A) Price elasticity rules dictate that people begin to fill their unlimited level of demand with their newfound wealth. They begin buying more stuff- down the chain, this demand is met by third world countries (if not directly, then by proxy). This process gives thirld world cultures a foundation of economic activity to climb.

B) Wealth must be invested. It's difficult for people who have never made much money to understand or believe this, but it's harder to keep money than it is to make it. Once someone (or a company) is incredibly wealthy, they have to find a way to maintain that wealth. You can only do two things with money, spend it or save it.
Most people don't think much about what savings means, they just put their money somewhere and it magically gains interest. Well, someone has to create that interest. Money invested goes to fund new companies and new growth, with the belief that the money will be paid back. Currently, most countries see their people and businesses invest their money in the US because we have a relatively pro-business legal system, with private property laws etc. In short, it's the safest place to put your money.
However, all money can't be invested in one place, and as wealth is created, new places must be found. Risk = reward, and those willing to invest in ventures in riskier areas will gain a higher return on their investment. The second effect of increased economic activity is that more money will be invested in third world countries.

If you shackle the progress of pinnacle countries and economies, you cut off the source of demand for third world products and the source of third world economic investment.

The good news is that it is possible for third world countries to go through the dirty industrial revolution much faster than than those who pioneered that phase, and in some cases skip steps. A good example is cell phone service, which is widespread in places where telophony infrastructure was never laid down.

In the same way, third world countries will have many chances to "cut in line" in terms of technology. A better analogy may be what many of my computer geek friends are familiar with- perhaps you upgrade your computers frequently and give your wife, girlfriend, or friend your old computer. She gets the benefit of a system that you already expended the effort to get working right. It may not be cutting edge, but it's one generation old, and it beats starting from scratch and having to learn how to build one herself.

In the same way, third world countries, because of the concepts of world trade and consumerism; if they build a coal power plant, it's likely to benefit from one generation old coal power technology, which is much cleaner and efficient than if they just came up with their own coal plant at a similar technology level to the first coal plants ever built.

While running coal power in new places in Africa for instance isn't great, it's much better to have them learning from our mistakes and years of progress. Where we spent 100 dirty (but incrasingly clean) years of coal pollution, they will likely spend 10 years at our 80% efficiency mark until they move on to a new technology.

Projects like Kyoto fail at the basic level that socialism always does. The idea that wealth is a pie to be divided up is fundamentally flawed. There are people who still believe that you can shackle the front runner in the race, and the people in the back will catch up. It just doesn't work that way.

If you stop the pioneers, or shackle them with arbitrary restrictions, you stop or seriously impede progress for everyone. Africa, Asia, and South America will not "catch up" if you halt America, England, and Australia. They will suffer miserably.

Within 100 years, the time that global warming will supposedly take it's effect, we have two options. Either we can have unfettered economic growth, which results in more efficient use of resources, easier types of labor, cleaner technology, and redistributed investment to poorer nations-

Or we can have a grab-ass game of "I'll take what you got, or keep you from getting more". If we go this route, economic pioneers will put their oxygen mask over their own face before tending to the passenger beside them... those who have the knowledge and ability to produce will be fine, and those who most need the second hand benefits of their work will suffer.

The best answer to global warming, or any human crisis, is to promote private property rights, encourage economic growth and investment, and end the supersticious fear of science.

[katoeylover]

Yes we all agree climate is changing, Ozzie, it is the reasons for this change that are being discussed and mans involvement in these changes.

[Guest]

The bigger question is when has the climate not changed.

[Tomcat]

(grunyen @ Mar. 13 2007,14:53) So Dr. John Christy Phd., professor and director of the Atmospheric Science Department at UAH and lead author of the IPCC report saying that man-made global warming is nonsense doesn't give TomCat the least bit of pause.

1
John Christy was not a lead Author on on the 2007 report. get your facts straight, he was a contributor
2
See below what Dr John Christy said in a NPublic radio interview. Something of a contrarian perhaps?

QUOTE John Christy
It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way.

[Guest]

Didn't you make this exact same post already?

Christy was a lead author on the original IPCC report, you are high as a kite if you say otherwise.

Christy has very plainly and clearly that h thinks it's probably very likely that we have altered land use and gases such that it would not be surprising to change the weather or climate somewhat. He has also said that Al Gore and other doomsayers are just making stuff up, and there is no evidence whatsoever to believe that an impending calamity is on the horizon.

[Guest]

Here's the parts you didn't copy and paste:

"Christy was a lead author for the 2001 UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US CCSP report Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences."

More recently, in a study presented to the Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy he said:

"I showed some evidence that humans are causing warming in the surface measurements that we have but it is not the greenhouse relation."

Christy has also said that while he supports the AGU declaration, and is convinced that human activities are a cause of the global warming that has been measured, he is "still a strong critic of scientists who make catastrophic predictions of huge increases in global temperatures and tremendous rises in sea levels."

[Tomcat]

(grunyen @ Mar. 23 2007,04:31) Christy was a lead author on the original IPCC report, you are high as a kite if you say otherwise.

High as a kite eh!. maybe ill try that new De Caf tea that there hawking down the supermarket....

The ORIGINAL report was made Circa 1990 . he was NOT lead Author . and the 2007 report and once again he was NOT the lead Author  ..Just a contributor!

Put that in your opium pipe and smoke it..
Your argument has more holes than a Swiss Cheese.

Even if Christy is a known contrarian it shows that that the IPCC do in fact take on board all views.

[Guest]

(grunyen @ Mar. 23 2007,06:31) Didn't you make this exact same post already?

Christy was a lead author on the original IPCC report, you are high as a kite if you say otherwise.

Christy has very plainly and clearly that h thinks it's probably very likely that we have altered land use and gases such that it would not be surprising to change the weather or climate somewhat. He has also said that Al Gore and other doomsayers are just making stuff up, and there is no evidence whatsoever to believe that an impending calamity is on the horizon.

Grunyen I actually think you are reasonably intelligent individual but somehow you seem to think yours is the only opinion and you are always the most factual. Why not listen to others and see all sides of an argument?

I am sure you will respond with a 1000 word essay

[Guest]

Because others are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.

TomCat, their is not just one "lead author". There are several people on the IPCC reports, and Christy wasone of the lead authors.

You should go to Pirate Bay and download the 60 Minutes episode where all the scientists complain that the government politicians changed their words in the IPCC reports.

[katoeylover]

I also believed he was a lead author/contributor

[Torurot]

Reuters


Antarctic melting may be speeding up - scientists

Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:36 PM IST

By Michael Byrnes

HOBART (Reuters) - Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.

A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 centimetres (7-23 inches) this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2-7.8 Farenheit).

"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church told Reuters.

"I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshhold," said Church, of Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said.

Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of metres, he said.

There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion tonne iceberg as big as Luxembourg.

But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat.

"There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six metres of sea level in west Antarctica," says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Hobart-based Australian Antarctic Division.

Doomsday has not yet arrived.

But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.

MELTING POLES

Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1,000 km (620 miles) north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting.

The break-up of ice in Antarctica to create icebergs is also opening pathways for accelerated flows to the sea by glaciers.

Church pointed out that sea levels were 4-6 metres higher more than 100,000 years ago when temperatures were at levels expected to be reached at the end of this century.

Dynamic ice-flows could add 25 percent to IPCC forecasts of sea level rise, van Ommen said.

Australian scientist John Hunter, who has focused on historical sea level information, said that to keep the sea water out, communities would need to begin raising sea walls.

"There's lots of places where you can't do that and where you'll have to put up with actual flooding," he said.

This was already happening in the south of England, where local councils and governments could not afford to protect all areas from sea water erosion as land continued to sink.

About 100 million people around the world live within a metre of the present-day sea level, CSIRO Marine Research senior principal research scientist Steve Rintoul said. "Those 100 million people will need to go somewhere," he said.

Worse, every metre of sea level rise causes an inland recession of around 100 metres (300 feet) and more erosion occurs with every storm.

"You can't just say we'll just put sea walls," Hunter said.

[Torurot]

Sunrise In Coal Fields:
http://www.321energy.com/editorials/...ns032307.html#
Coal€™s Role In A Peak Oil World

Slide show with some interesting figures (U.S. based).

[katoeylover]

(Torurot @ Mar. 24 2007,10:15) Reuters


Antarctic melting may be speeding up - scientists

Fri Mar 23, 2007 4:36 PM IST

By Michael Byrnes

http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/981506...-82F4D6554EE9/

Last summer, Dr. Wingham and three colleagues published an article in the journal of the Royal Society that casts further doubt on the notion that global warming is adversely affecting Antarctica. By studying satellite data from 1992 to 2003 that surveyed 85% of the East Antarctic ice sheet and 51% of the West Antarctic ice sheet (72% of the ice sheet covering the entire land mass), they discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing at the rate of 5 millimetres per year (plus or minus 1 mm per year). That makes Antarctica a sink, not a source, of ocean water. According to their best estimates, Antarctica will "lower [authors' italics] global sea levels by 0.08 mm" per year.

If these findings are validated in future by CryoSat-2 and other developments that are able to assess the 28% of Antarctica not yet surveyed, the low-lying areas of the world will have weathered the worst of the global warming predictions: The populations of these areas -- in Bangladesh, in the Maldives, and elsewhere -- will have found that, if anything, they can look forward to a future with more nutrient-rich seacoast, not less.

Dr. Wingham is Principal Scientist of the European Space Agency's CryoSat Satellite Mission, a $130-million project designed to map changes in the depth of ice using ultra-precise instrumentation. Sadly for Dr. Wingham and for science as a whole, CryoSat fell into the Arctic Ocean after its launch in October, 2005, when a rocket launcher malfunctioned. Dr Wingham will now need to wait until 2009 before CryoSat-2, CryoSat's even more precise successor, can launch and begin relaying the data that should conclusively determine whether Antarctica's ice sheets are thinning or not. Apart from satellite technology, no known way exists to reliably determine changes in mass over a vast and essentially unexplorable continent covered in ice several kilometres thick.

[Guest]

I just heard the other day that the other planets in our solar system have been having the same global warming that we have.

I wonder when the martians and venusians built their industrial factories.