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Forums - General - Do you think humans are helping cause Climate change?

 

Are humans the leading factor in our changing climate?

Of course we are. 73 55.30%
 
Probably. 17 12.88%
 
Probably not. 12 9.09%
 
Absolutely not. 23 17.42%
 
I have no idea. 6 4.55%
 
I wanna change apms climate ;) 1 0.76%
 
Total:132
Rath on 03 May 2012
Kynes said:

In groupthink, organizations value consensus more than free thought. The emphasis on consensus leads to group polarization, in which a group’s positions become more extreme than any individual would come up with. Alarmist climate science is a textbook example of groupthink in action.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/why-climate-science-is-a-textbook-example-of-groupthink/


The problem is that the consensus is generally considered by individuals to be conservative.

The IPCC report (which I'm taking to be the 'consensus' view) is considered by many individual climate scientists to always take the lowest bound of the models - the lowest amount of warming that will occur, the lowest amount of sea level rise that will result etc.

 

@Soundwave. Do you have any science to back up climate change being unpredictable?

 

@The hydrogen debate. As useful as hydrogen fuel could be it simply isn't practical in vehicles because of the fact that it's pretty damned unstable. Electricity (from fusion hopefully) will be the thing to replace petrol.



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Kynes on 03 May 2012
Rath said:
Kynes said:

In groupthink, organizations value consensus more than free thought. The emphasis on consensus leads to group polarization, in which a group’s positions become more extreme than any individual would come up with. Alarmist climate science is a textbook example of groupthink in action.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/30/why-climate-science-is-a-textbook-example-of-groupthink/


The problem is that the consensus is generally considered by individuals to be conservative.

The IPCC report (which I'm taking to be the 'consensus' view) is considered by many individual climate scientists to always take the lowest bound of the models - the lowest amount of warming that will occur, the lowest amount of sea level rise that will result etc.

 

@Soundwave. Do you have any science to back up climate change being unpredictable?

 

@The hydrogen debate. As useful as hydrogen fuel could be it simply isn't practical in vehicles because of the fact that it's pretty damned unstable. Electricity (from fusion hopefully) will be the thing to replace petrol.


Are you talking about these conservative predictions?

 

 

By 1990 IPCC prediction, we should have had now 0.8 C more than we have. 1995, 2001 and 2007 predictions have huge margins of error, an error of 0.2C in 5 years in the 2007 one. I just can't see that as a conservative prediction. IPCC 1990 prediction was mainly based in Hansen's 1988 A scenario, the less conservative of the three scenarios and supposedly based on no CO2 emissions cut:

 

 

If we use lower air data, which can't be manipulated using only selected ground stations, things change dramatically:

I can't accept that these are conservative estimations.



happydolphin on 03 May 2012
SvennoJ said:
happydolphin said:
 

So what's stopping us from making it happen?

Also, can commercial airplanes run off hydrogen cells with today's technology?

Cost, as you see from the Spain example being the first to force renewable energy has the risk of pricing yourself out of the market. This can only be done as a global effort or when oil becomes more expensive, although that might be too late to start the transition.
Hopefully oil, gas and coal prices will go up gradually enough to make the transition to alternative energy production and storage.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are still really expensive to build, $120.000 to build one in 2015 according to Toyota. Hawaii is the new testing ground after Iceland went belly up. The biggest problem though is having to build the delivery infrastructure for H2 from the ground up.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/green-driving/news-and-notes/hawaii-the-testing-ground-for-hydrogen-cars/article1953437/

The battery alternative is great for city use, but who wants to wait an hour at a recharge station to wait for the battery to recharge. Another good thing about H2 production is it can take all the excess electricity that is now simply lost. Power plants over produce to make sure we don't have brownouts. A lot of energy is wasted this way. It could help with solar and wind too, store the excess during the day, feed it back to the net during the night to recharge all those car batteries.

Boeing doesn't believe in hydrogen for commercial airplanes yet, there are some plans for private planes though.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/aviation/news/4257294


You're right Quebec is great with hydro power, and Canada as a whole has almost 60% of it's power from hydro plants. However as my example shows you need to nearly triple electricity production to replace the use of gasoline. Whether you store it in batteries or in hydrogen doesn't make that much of a difference. The question is can we realize that in time before the lack of cheap oil starts to hinder us.


Some wild speculation about the future. Maybe futuristic cars can be charged while being propelled by magnetic propulsion on main roads. The same way maglev trains are propelled. That way the electric engines in the wheels can recharge the car battery while the car is being pushed along. My gut tells me that will be highly energy inefficient and requires a lot of expensive technology to be build under main roads. It would be cool though. Self driving cars that recharge while driving on main roads.

Very informative stuff!



DarthVolod on 04 May 2012
Rath said:
DarthVolod said:
thismeintiel said:
 

What I find funny about man made Global Warming supporters is that, for the most part, they support people on the left, be they actors or politicians, because of there supposed passion about this subject and resolve to change things.  One has only to look at these peoples lifestyles to see that they don't truly believe what they are preaching about.  If they did, they would be dropping their own carbon footprint.  Instead they fly around on private jets.  Own multiple mansions that suck up electricity.  Own multiple expensive cars that are most likely horrible on gas mileage.  They're basically playing people for fools, asking you to change your lifestyle, persecute companies, while they continue to live lavishly.  And Al Gore is one of the worst offenders.


Lol you just reminded me of the enviromentalist group on my campus that is always passing around tons and tons of flyers. Even if the paper is recycled, 80% of them end up on the ground somehwhere which gets litter all over our otherwise clean campus which ironically makesthem the greatest polluters at my college.

The lifestyles of big supporters of global warming like Al Gore always reveal their true beliefs. I remember the big rich environmentalist types had a meeting on climate change in Copenhagen a few years back with attendees from around the world. Would it not be better for the environment to hold that same meeting online or through a conference call instead of burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel?


Poor practices by supporters does not make the science poor.

In any case the amount of carbon contributed by the copenhagen conference is (relatively) miniscule. The amount of carbon that would not be produced if the world leaders actually got around to doing something about the problem would be huge.


True, but I think we can both agree that it makes thier beliefs look rather questionable as a result. If I am a smoker and I am also an anti smoking activist that goes around telling everyone not to smoke, and that smoking is bad for you even as I go through 3 packs a day ... well then you kind of have to question my commitment to the cause. That does not necessarily mean that the science behind what I am saying is wrong, but it is not a very consistant way to present my case

Like I said before, even if the world leaders got together there is nothing they could do aside from hassle the few remaining American manufacturers left. China and the developing nations are not going to stop using as much oil as possible as they continue to expand. The only thing that could stop them is a military invasion which not even Obama would be crazy enough to get tangled up in ... especially over a non-issue like global warming.

Ultimately, the only achievements the environmentalist movement can claim are: making America even more dependent on foreign oil, wasting billions on inefficient green energy programs, killing jobs in manufacturing while replacing them with green energy jobs that require massive subsidies from the government to remain afloat, making Al Gore even more rich, and helping Obama get elected.

Don't get me wrong ... I agree that we have to take some steps to make sure the planet remains a safe place for us to live (at least until we terraform Mars or something), but so far governments and their environmentalist lobbies have only caused harm while doing virtually nothing to solve the rather innocuous problem of climate change. If they really cared about the environment then they would do things like calling for an end to meat subsidies for farmers which produce a large amount of carbon (killing two birds with one stone since I imagine that many environmentalists are also big on animal rights). Also, an emphasis on private property and not on creating vast stretches of unusable real estate in the form of national parks would have a greater impact than anything they have proposed ... when land belongs to someone they are going to go out of their way and do everything possible to maintain it because it is in their best interest ... an authoritarian law would never have that same effect.

All of this is beside the point though as I am sure the environmentalist movement was largely conceived as a political lobby centered on an artificial issue that is vaguely scientific enough for people to believe ... it is a movement that both the right (global cooling) and the left (global warming) have used and will probably continue to use so long as they can convince enough people to take up the cause.



SvennoJ on 05 May 2012

The future is happening in France right now at the ITER program. The first fusion reactor to be able to produce 500MW for 50MW of input energy. (In comparison new nuclear fission reactors produce upto 1500MW, yet the first fission reactor only produced 50MW) The bad part is it will still take until 2020 before the fusion reactor becomes operational.

 

Laser fusion or Inertial Confinement Fusion also had a few breakthroughs in the last years. The HiPER project is in the planning stage to build a commercial reactor. They expect to have a working reactor in the early 2020's if laser fusion ignition and energy gain (on the NIF laser in the USA) proves succesful this year.




2 Exciting projects that may change the world in the next couple of decades.