Global Warming?

[PastorMikeJ]

so I guess I won't get my ocean front property in my life time,huh?????? sighhhhhhhhh!!!

 

[susanann]

Climate change seems to be an issue of far more importance to America and the human race as a whole than gay marriage will ever be. Yet it receives almost no attention on these forums or in the real world of politics. I am trying to understand why? If you are a climate change sceptic please elaborate...

We have had global warming since the end of the last Ice Age.

Man didnt do it.

The dinosaurs did not do it.

It occurs in cycles.

Hopefully global warming will continue.

Would you rather have an Ice Age?

 

[Maxwell511]

'Climate' is to 'weather' as 'history' is to 'news.' The random scales of fluctiations that we call 'weather' have analogs on longer timescales.

I'm curious, would the climate not be the result of strange attractors and the weather just be the trajectories within the attractor?

Edit: I found the answer to this. It is yes.

For those that don't a clue what I am talking about. It means that short term changes in weather are not the same as long term changes in climate.

 

[one love]

The public also doesn't keep up with paleontology, but hopefully most of them don't base their knowledge of human evolution on "Encino Man".

That is a Pauly Shore movie, I doubt whether anyone outside you and I have seen it. But I will state my belief that movies may not at all be a source of knowledge, but are an influence.

As far as the difference between climate change and weather, I think, myself including, people have the apprehensiveness to derive from climate change and various articles that climate changes ultimately effect the weather. That an increase in temperature will lead to an increase in storm activity and thus plague mankind to live on a soon to be 'Venus', seems to be the first thought to some people's mind.

Sometimes the mere mention of global warming leads to blown out scenarios of artic ice melting and causing 70% of the earth's solid land mass above water to be engufed in water, or some thought of freak hurricanes.

There is much to be assessed about the 'implications' of global warming, though it happens anyway and involves distrorted rhetoric of a doomsday scenario, much like debate about the RHIC in NY.

 

[morningstar2651]

Climate change seems to be an issue of far more importance to America and the human race as a whole than gay marriage will ever be. Yet it receives almost no attention on these forums or in the real world of politics. I am trying to understand why? If you are a climate change sceptic please elaborate...

We have had an effect on the rate that the Earth's climate is changing at. It's accelerated, and we are largely to blame for its acceleration.

Other animals are much more sensitive to climate changes than we are.

• Link
• Link

 

[JVD]

Get used to it, the place jiggles.

Very Succinct

As for the manmade nudges down in the noise, we'd be hardpressed to control the weather, much less the climate, even if we deliberately tried to do same. That's not an excuse not to be as smart as we can about what we do, and avoid poluuting the commons, but computer generated climate modeling is certainly no definitive basis to go off half cocked as an excuse to implement some worldwide command and control economy, which is the real basis for this endless climate model pimping.

Very well made point.

That is not to say that things aren't getting warmer. All this blather about doomsday may be right...or wrong! The point is that it will not be possible to change our behavior in the drastic way it would be needed to make huge reductions in co2 output.

BTW...has anyone ever driven the Alaska Highway. There is an awful lot of empty land in Canada that would be a lovely place to settle if it gets a little warmer. You can drive for a long time there at night and not see a single light. Same goes for Siberia.

 

[Maxwell511]

Very well made point.

His point is invalid since climate is defined by strange attractors not trajectories which are bifurcating.

 

[hoser]

We cannot even cause a local thunderstorm to occur, but we as humans can cause the whole entire earth to warm? Give me a break. The Earth may have warmed slightly over the past number of years, but man had no part in that. It's just a natural cycle.

 

[Maxwell511]

We cannot even cause a local thunderstorm to occur, but we as humans can cause the whole entire earth to warm? Give me a break.

Yes. Don't make me say strange attractors again.

The Earth may have warmed slightly over the past number of years, but man had no part in that. It's just a natural cycle.

There are for example natural cycles in carbon dioxide but we have managed to increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to levels way above those seen in the last few hundred thousand years. Here is a graph:

 

[morningstar2651]

We cannot even cause a local thunderstorm to occur, but we as humans can cause the whole entire earth to warm? Give me a break. The Earth may have warmed slightly over the past number of years, but man had no part in that. It's just a natural cycle.

We aren't causing it, however, we have accelerated the cycle. The industrial revolution dramatically increased the amount of Carbon Dioxide.

Our actions these past 200 years will have consequences.

More news.

 

[morningstar2651]

Yes. Don't make me say strange attractors again.



There are for example natural cycles in carbon dioxide but we have managed to increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to levels way above those seen in the last few hundred thousand years. Here is a graph:

Mind reader! Get out of my head! *flees*

 

[Maxwell511]

<snip>

 

[SummerMadness]

The state of environment is the most important issue of our time. I will rephrase my statement, man will destroy himself if he doesn't come to grips that he is effecting the environment around him. This attitude that "no one knows" comes from a lack of reading scientific journals and articles. Open up a peer-review journal and the idea that "no one knows" is just plain laughable.

We understand carbon dioxide and we know we're responsible for the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, to keep pretending like we haven't done anything is willful ignorance. Some will say, the planet has warmed and cooled before, but the planet hasn't warmed so quickly before. Changes that took hundreds of years are being seen within a century.

We pride ourselves on being intelligent beings, yet we make no attempt of self-preservation. We see other animals are concerned with self-preservation, yet with humans I find it mystifying that not enough people care. And even without global warming, we're still poisoning ourselves. Terrorists are not going to kill you, but the garbage in our food, water, and air.

 

[susanann]

The state of environment is the most important issue of our time. I will rephrase my statement, man will destroy himself if he doesn't come to grips that he is effecting the environment around him. This attitude that "no one knows" comes from a lack of reading scientific journals and articles. Open up a peer-review journal and the idea that "no one knows" is just plain laughable.

.

The major factor in increasing pollution, is increasing population.

If you are serious about using less natural resources, about polluting less, than what you really should be working on is decreasing our population, zero population growth, etc.

There is no way you can keep doubling our population in our country, doubling the numbers of people who drive cars, who create sewage, etc, expect anything else.

for example, we reduced emissions from each car we build, but we doubled the number of cars, and will double them again.

If you are not serious about limiting population, then you are not serious about being concerned about our environment.

the 300 million people we have today are hurting our environment more than 150 million a few years ago, and when we get to half a billion people living here, then a billion people living here, it is going to get worse, not better. The best thing we could have done for our environment a few years back when we had 200 million people living here, was cutting back to 100 million instead of increasing our population to 300 million.

 

[susanann]

Does it make any sense on any level to continue burning the levels of fossil fuels we currently burn, and wasting energy at the level we currently waste it?

On another level as far as we know we have limited resources of these substances, which are actually used for far more than fuel. Imagine not being able to make plastic - what effect would that have on the modern world. Does it makes sense to continue using this substance as fuel in incredibly inefficient ways?

It makes no sense to me on any level to continue down our current path.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL

The oil in your oatmeal
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast



Chad Heeter
Sunday, March 26, 2006



Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.
On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this morning is a healthy-looking little meal -- a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home, and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a cafe in downtown Berkeley, I'd probably have to add $6 more, plus tip, for the same.)

My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So for just over a buck and half and an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.
Then what you'd be likely to see -- what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) -- is about 4 ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (an additional 3 ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk and salt (1 more ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.

Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)

Nearly 20 percent of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially raised coffee in Guatemala -- think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.

The next 40 percent of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging and shipping.

Take that box of McCann's oatmeal. On it is an inviting image of pure, healthy goodness: a bowl of porridge, topped by two peach slices. Scattered around the bowl are a handful of raw oats, what look to be four acorns and three fresh raspberries. Those raw oats are actually a reminder that the flakes require a few steps 'twixt field and box. In fact, a visit to McCann's Web site illustrates each step of cleaning, steaming, hulling, cutting and rolling that turns the raw oats into edible flakes. Those five essential steps require significant energy.

Next, my oat flakes go into a plastic bag (made from oil), which in turn is inserted into an energy-intensive, pressed wood-pulp, printed paper box. Only then does my breakfast leave Ireland and travel 5,000 fuel-gorging, carbon-dioxide-emitting miles by ship and truck to my grocery store in California.

Coming from another hemisphere, my raspberries take an even longer fossil-fueled journey to my neighborhood. Though packaged in a plastic bag labeled Cascadian Farms (which perhaps suggests birthplace in the good old Cascade mountains of northwest Washington), the small print on the back, stamped "A Product of Chile," tells all -- and what it speaks of is a 5,800-mile journey to Northern California.

If you've been adding up percentages along the way, perhaps you've noticed that a few tablespoons of crude oil in my bowl have not been accounted for. That final 40 percent of the fossil fuel in my breakfast is used up by the simple acts of keeping food fresh and then preparing it. In home kitchens and restaurants, chilling in refrigerators and cooking on stoves using electricity or natural gas gobbles up more energy than you might imagine.

For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output.

What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)

But this is only an average. My cup of coffee gives me just a few calories of energy, but to process 1 pound of coffee requires more than 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly a quart of crude oil, 30 cubic feet of natural gas or about 2 1/2 pounds of coal.
So how do you gauge how much oil went into your food?
First check out how far it traveled. The farther it went, the more oil it required. Next, gauge how much processing went into the food. A fresh apple is not processed, but Kellogg's Apple Jacks cereal requires enormous amounts of energy to process. The more processed the food, the more oil it requires. Then consider how much packaging is wrapped around your food. Buy fresh vegetables instead of canned, and buy bulk beans, grains, and flour if you want to reduce that packaging.

You may think you're in the clear because you eat strictly organically grown foods. When it comes to fossil-fuel calculations though, that isn't relevant. However it is grown, a raspberry is shipped, packed and chilled the same way.

There is some energy savings in growing organically, but it's probably slight. According to a study by David Pimentel at Cornell University, 30 percent of fossil-fuel expenditure on farms growing conventional (nonorganic) crops is found in chemical fertilizer.

This 30 percent is not consumed on organic farms, but only if the manure used as fertilizer is produced very close to the farm. Manure is a heavy, bulky product.

If farms have to truck bulk manure more than a few miles, the savings is eaten up in diesel-fuel consumption, according to Pimentel.

One source of manure for organic farmers in California is chicken producer Foster Farms. Organic farmers in Monterey County, for example, will truck tons of Foster's manure from their main plant in Livingston (Merced County) to fields more than 100 miles away.

So the next time we're at the grocer, do we now have to ask not only where and how a product was grown, but how far its manure was shipped?

Well, if you're in New York City picking out a California-grown tomato that was fertilized with organic compost made from kelp shipped from Nova Scotia, maybe it's not such a bad question.

But should we give up on organic? If you're buying organic raspberries from Chile each week, then yes. The fuel cost is too great, as is the resulting production of the greenhouse gases.

But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.

On a scale from one to five -- with one being nonprocessed, locally grown products and five being processed, packaged imports -- we could quickly average the numbers in our shopping cart to get a sense of the ecological footprint of our diet.

What appeared to be my simple, healthy meal of oatmeal, berries and coffee looks different now. I thought I was essentially driving a Toyota Prius hybrid by having a very fuel-efficient breakfast, but by the end of the week, I've eaten the equivalent of more than two quarts of Valvoline.
From the perspective of fossil-fuel consumption, I now look at my breakfast as a waste of precious resources. What I eat for breakfast connects me to the planet, deep into its past with the fossilized remains of plants and animals which are now fuel, and into the future, when these nonrenewable resources will probably be in scant supply.
Maybe these thoughts are too grand to be having over breakfast, but I'm not the only one on the planet eating this morning. My meal traveled thousands of miles to reach my plate.

Then there's the rise of perhaps 600 million middle-class Indians and Chinese, already demanding the convenience of packaged meals and foreign flavors.
What happens when middle-class families in India or China decide they want their Irish oats for breakfast and topped by organic raspberries from Chile? They'll dip more and more into the planet's communal oil well. And someday soon, we'll all suck it dry.

 

[ScottishJohn]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/26/ING3PHRU681.DTL

The oil in your oatmeal
A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast



Chad Heeter
Sunday, March 26, 2006

This is often the case. Which is why my wife and I no longer shop in supermarkets when possible. Our organic vegetables are grown locally and delivered by a highly efficient diesel van. We eat whatever is in season, so there is no need for egyptian new potatoes or chilean raspberries etc, they deliver milk as well, the vegetables come in nets which we return for reuse, and the milk comes in hdpe cartons which the council collect for recycling. Our meat comes from a local butcher, and we can trace all of it (beef pork chicken lamb and game) back to within a 100 mile radius of where we live. It comes wrapped in paper which is easy to recycle unlike the styrofoam trays you get in supermarkets. Our fish comes from a van which delivers to our street on a thursday, and again comes from within a 100 miles of where we live, it is also wrapped in paper. Our bread we make ourselves in a bread maker which is incredibly efficient and uses off peak overnight electricity. We use organically produced flour which is grown and milled in the UK.

All of this makes sense on so many levels. It supports local famers. The reduction in travel means it is a) fresher (this makes a big difference in the fish - supermarket fish is usually a week old) b) in the case of the meat, it is less stressed when it is slaughtered, and therefore better quality c) uses up much less fuel, d) it does not use up extra energy for refrigerated storage. The actual food is better quality, it is not forced to fruit in unatural conditions, it is not selected according to how shiny it is or whether it is the 'right shape' it is not grown out of season, it has not been lying in various warehouses and trucks for weeks, is not pumped full of water steroids and anti biotics, is not covered in pesticides and chemicals, has more flavour and is generally fantastic, as well as all this it is actually cheaper.

There is absolutely no need for this supermarket culture - it isn't even convenient. We are paying more for artificially produced, poor quality, additive laden, contaminated, week old food which has been shipped from the other side of the world just so we can eat Strawberries out of season, and in order to reap this 'privledge' we have to fight over car park spaces jostle with other trolley wielding lunatics, fight over the last steroid and water inflated battery reared chicken, and que to hand over more money than any of it is worth.

 

[susanann]

Quote Originally Posted by: ScottishJohn

Does it make any sense on any level to continue burning the levels of fossil fuels we currently burn, and wasting energy at the level we currently waste it?

On another level as far as we know we have limited resources of these substances, which are actually used for far more than fuel. Imagine not being able to make plastic - what effect would that have on the modern world. Does it makes sense to continue using this substance as fuel in incredibly inefficient ways?

It makes no sense to me on any level to continue down our current path.

Products Made From Oil

Clothing Ink
Heart Valves
Crayons
Parachutes
Telephones
Enamel
Transparent tape
Antiseptics
Vacuum bottles
Deodorant
Pantyhose
Rubbing Alcohol
Carpets
Epoxy paint
Oil filters
Upholstery
Hearing Aids
Car sound insulation
Cassettes
Motorcycle helmets
Pillows
Shower doors
Shoes
Refrigerator linings
Electrical tape
Safety glass
Awnings
Salad bowl
Rubber cement
Nylon rope
Ice buckets
Fertilizers
Hair coloring
Toilet seats
Denture adhesive
Loudspeakers
Movie film
Fishing boots
Candles
Water pipes
Car enamel
Shower curtains
Credit cards
Aspirin
Golf balls
Detergents
Sunglasses
Glue
Fishing rods
Linoleum
Plastic wood
Soft contact lenses
Trash bags
Hand lotion
Shampoo
Shaving cream
Footballs
Paint brushes
Balloons
Fan belts
Umbrellas
Paint Rollers
Luggage
Antifreeze

Model cars
Floor wax
Sports car bodies
Tires
Dishwashing liquids
Unbreakable dishes
Toothbrushes
Toothpaste
Combs
Tents
Hair curlers
Lipstick
Ice cube trays
Electric blankets
Tennis rackets
Drinking cups
House paint
Rollerskates wheels
Guitar strings
Ammonia
Eyeglasses
Ice chests
Life jackets
TV cabinets
Car battery cases
Insect repellent
Refrigerants
Typewriter ribbons
Cold cream
Glycerin
Plywood adhesive
Cameras
Anesthetics
Artificial turf
Artificial Limbs
Bandages
Dentures
Mops
Beach Umbrellas
Ballpoint pens
Boats
Nail polish
Golf bags
Caulking
Tape recorders
Curtains
Vitamin capsules
Dashboards
Putty
Percolators
Skis
Insecticides
Fishing lures
Perfumes
Shoe polish
Petroleum jelly
Faucet washers
Food preservatives
Antihistamines
Cortisone
Dyes
LP records
Solvents
Roofing

 

[susanann]

This is often the case. Which is why my wife and I no longer shop in supermarkets when possible. Our organic vegetables are grown locally and delivered by a highly efficient diesel van. Our meat comes from a local butcher, and we can trace all of it (beef pork chicken lamb and game) back to within a 100 mile radius of where we live. It comes wrapped in paper which is easy to recycle unlike the styrofoam trays you get in supermarkets. Our fish comes from a van which delivers to our street on a thursday, and again comes from within a 100 miles of where we live, it is also wrapped in paper. The reduction in travel means it uses up much less fuel, d) it does not use up extra energy for refrigerated storage.

YOu realize.......

..of course......

....that simply "reducing" (fossil fuel, et al) consumption, while at the same time multiplying your population, is making things worse!!!!

the more people you have, the less land for game to be hunted, the less fish to catch, the more family farms to change into concrete, the more woodlands to be replaced by subdivisions, the more rain forests to be cut down, the more resources you use up, etc.

 

[ScottishJohn]

Products Made From Oil

Clothing Ink
Heart Valves
Crayons
Parachutes
Telephones
Enamel
Transparent tape
Antiseptics
Vacuum bottles
Deodorant
Pantyhose
Rubbing Alcohol
Carpets
Epoxy paint
Oil filters
Upholstery
Hearing Aids
Car sound insulation
Cassettes
Motorcycle helmets
Pillows
Shower doors
Shoes
Refrigerator linings
Electrical tape
Safety glass
Awnings
Salad bowl
Rubber cement
Nylon rope
Ice buckets
Fertilizers
Hair coloring
Toilet seats
Denture adhesive
Loudspeakers
Movie film
Fishing boots
Candles
Water pipes
Car enamel
Shower curtains
Credit cards
Aspirin
Golf balls
Detergents
Sunglasses
Glue
Fishing rods
Linoleum
Plastic wood
Soft contact lenses
Trash bags
Hand lotion
Shampoo
Shaving cream
Footballs
Paint brushes
Balloons
Fan belts
Umbrellas
Paint Rollers
Luggage
Antifreeze

Model cars
Floor wax
Sports car bodies
Tires
Dishwashing liquids
Unbreakable dishes
Toothbrushes
Toothpaste
Combs
Tents
Hair curlers
Lipstick
Ice cube trays
Electric blankets
Tennis rackets
Drinking cups
House paint
Rollerskates wheels
Guitar strings
Ammonia
Eyeglasses
Ice chests
Life jackets
TV cabinets
Car battery cases
Insect repellent
Refrigerants
Typewriter ribbons
Cold cream
Glycerin
Plywood adhesive
Cameras
Anesthetics
Artificial turf
Artificial Limbs
Bandages
Dentures
Mops
Beach Umbrellas
Ballpoint pens
Boats
Nail polish
Golf bags
Caulking
Tape recorders
Curtains
Vitamin capsules
Dashboards
Putty
Percolators
Skis
Insecticides
Fishing lures
Perfumes
Shoe polish
Petroleum jelly
Faucet washers
Food preservatives
Antihistamines
Cortisone
Dyes
LP records
Solvents
Roofing

All the things I have coloured red are things that off the top of my head we could currently make with other substances, or could do without.

Where is the sense in continuing to waste this precious resource?

 

[ScottishJohn]

YOu realize.......

..of course......

....that simply "reducing" (fossil fuel, et al) consumption, while at the same time multiplying your population, is making things worse!!!!

the more people you have, the less land for game to be hunted, the less fish to catch, the more family farms to change into concrete, the more woodlands to be replaced by subdivisions, the more rain forests to be cut down, the more resources you use up, etc.

Still if each person could reduce their fossil fuel usage by half now, (an easy target) then that gives us plenty of time for waiting until the population doubles. We might also work at a more sustainable growth rate if we wanted to.