How would you solve Global Warming?

[eclipsenow]

Hi all,
for those who actually accept normal peer-reviewed science, how would you solve this great challenge?

(Note: this is NOT a thread for denialists, please take trolling elsewhere on this one).

 

[CabVet]

I think it is too late to solve it. But we can certainly lower our impact. A good step would be serious investments in non-gas powered cars.

 

[seeking Christ]

Let's just all make ice in our freezers and leave it out on the sidewalk?

No seriously, converting cars to natural gas would even help a lot. Natural gas co-generators being employed at our power plants would do a lot, even w/o replacing our grid that wastes fully 1/2 of every watt put into it. To that end, our windmills supplying power locally w/o ever entering the grid do quite a bit. Stop using coal entirely.

If the US populace would just turn off lights that aren't being used, even to a paltry savings on their electric bill that no one would ever notice, this would have a huge impact, nationwide!

In short, there is a LOT we can do, w/o having to resort to anything drastic. I still can't believe that the energy crunch in the 70's didn't result in ending all motor sports. What are we waiting for? Fuel burned on the track during the race is the smallest of all wastes; there are a LOT of circuits, and everybody has to travel to get to the event. The amount of fuel that one team burns in a season is staggering, often over 500 gallons of diesel in a weekend, then multiply that by the number of teams ...

 

[eclipsenow]

1. REFUEL ON NUKES

TODAY'S NUKES
* Today's Gen3.5 nukes are SAFE. They could easily survive Fukishima's tidal wave. They have awesome external cooling gear, but even if these all fail in some terrorist or natural disaster, the heart of the reactor itself is our safety feature! If the fuel rods over-heat, they expand and leak neutrons. This shuts down the reaction. 'Neutron Leak' means it is physically impossible for today's reactors to melt down. Banning SAFE modern nukes because of Chernobyl or Fukishima is like banning modern aviation because of the Hindenberg.

TOMORROW'S NUKES
* Tomorrows Gen4 nukes will EAT NUCLEAR WASTE! Generation IV (Gen4) nukes are based on known physics from over 300 Reactor Years running Breeder Reactors. We have demonstrated the physics in reactors like the EBR 2. This is not like fusion reactors: it's known physics.
Experimental Breeder Reactor II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(The EBR2 was one of the world's first Integral Fast Reactors)

2. REZONE ON NEW URBANISM can reduce our need for cars, use 10% of the land, restore local agriculture, and create a more pleasant, trendy, economically robust, safe, and healthy environment.
Please watch my favourite New Urbanism video "Built to last" which is more like a music video than lecture. (4 minutes)
Built To Last - YouTube

We could forget energy efficient cars and start building energy efficient cities, but my guess is there will be some electric car clubs where you can hire them on occasion.

Also extremely thought provoking is this fantastic article "My other car is a Bright Green city!." Grab a coffee! Alex Steffen shows how in just 20 years we could drastically reduce oil dependency by clever city rezoning.
Worldchanging | Evaluation + Tools + Best Practices: My Other Car is a Bright Green City

3. RAIL: Fast rail inter-city and more trains, trams, and trolley buses intra-city.
Lastly, trolley buses go up 5 times cheaper and faster than trams.
Low-tech Magazine: Get wired (again): Trolleybuses and Trolleytrucks
Rail | Eclipse Now

4. RECYCLE all household waste in a Plasma Burner. Think of a Plasma Arc Burner as a molecular sorter. Basically in go household rubbish like rotting old pizza boxes and smelly jogging shoes and dirty diapers and paints and plastics, and out comes syngas for the petrochemical industry and molten lava that can be spun into building materials. In goes rubbish, and out comes new plastics and fuels and lubricants and house roof tiles and bricks and plastic faux wood cladding and insulation. Basically, in goes household rubbish, and out comes the ingredients to build half a house!
Plasma Burners Recycle | Eclipse Now

5. REPLENISH the soil through Biochar: mass conversion of agriwaste to be cooked into charcoal (not burned into ash) so that it can be added back to that farm's soil. It traps water, nutrients, and carbon all fantastically efficiently.
Replenish the soil | Eclipse Now

If this cannot soak up enough carbon dioxide in a REAL climate emergency, then we can mine and grind and spread olivine which chemically bonds with it. $200 billion a year or so would soak up all the world's Co2!
Olivine | Eclipse Now

 

[Elendur]

Eat less meat. (It also helps solve some other problems)

 

[RickG]

I think it is too late to solve it. But we can certainly lower our impact. A good step would be serious investments in non-gas powered cars.

I agree, all that can be done is lessen the impact. By non-gas powered cars, do you mean electric cars? Keep in mind where most of our electricity comes from. Aside from that I've always had a fancy toward hydrogen powered cars and water is an excellent source of hydrogen.

 

[Elendur]

I agree, all that can be done is lessen the impact. By non-gas powered cars, do you mean electric cars? Keep in mind where most of our electricity comes from. Aside from that I've always had a fancy toward hydrogen powered cars and water is an excellent source of hydrogen.

And where does the energy required to convert the water to hydrogen come from?

 

[tonybeer]

Hope that Nuclear Fusion Power comes along as soon as possible.

 

[Tomk80]

I think it is too late to solve it. Lessening the impact I think could be done. Some relatively easy stuff would be:

1. Nuclear power: both 3rd and hopefully 4th generation nuclear power generators
2. Solar, wind and possibly wave energy.

However, I do think we need to redesign our lives, if we want the whole world to be able to have simlar standards of living as the west. I think we need to redesign it in the following ways:

3. Redesign our urban system --> more work from home, people living closer to their work etc, so that transportation can be minimized. I do not think electric cars are an option, since the batteries needed use several metals as a component that are hard to come by and could not provide for all cars. Also, power will still need to be produced to fuel the cars (although this could arguably be done through nuclear power or even fusion).
3. Redesign our thinking on transportation: currently in many industries, different parts of a product are produced in widely distant areas. The relatively low cost of transportation makes this feasible. We should try to have production facilities in places so that the energy required for transportation is minimized.
4. Redesign our diet --> less meat, more plants. I do not mean that we should stop eating meat altogether, but we will have to reduce the amount of meat we consume. This has both a health benefit as well as an energy conserving benefit.
5. Utilize cradle-to-cradle design. In designing products, housing, our society, we should be aware of every step of the "production" process and try to make sure as many parts of the process can be recycled.
I do not think we can tackle our current problems without a significant shift in the way we live. Not if we want to allow the populations of other countries to get into a similar wealth as we have now. I think it is feasible to raise the standard of living for a large portion of the population on this world, but I do think this needs us to take some steps back in what we have become used to. We currently produce a lot of waste where it is not necessary, and could easily reduce this if we take a little time to think.

 

[CabVet]

I agree, all that can be done is lessen the impact. By non-gas powered cars, do you mean electric cars? Keep in mind where most of our electricity comes from. Aside from that I've always had a fancy toward hydrogen powered cars and water is an excellent source of hydrogen.

Well, I meant alternative fuels. Natural gas could be a first step, but nor a solution. Hydrogen would be ideal for sure, and so would be solar.

 

[seeking Christ]

Solar powered cars, speed limit 2.5 m.p.h.

 

[Elendur]

Solar powered cars, speed limit 2.5 m.p.h.

Here's a homemade (to a degree) electric car that, currently, uses 20% solar power. It has no problem with speed.
el-forest elbil - YouTube

He has bought the equipment to produce more than the car uses so when the spring arrives it'll be 100%.

If a private person can produce something like that there should be no problem with commercial ones.

 

[TheBear]

I love warmer weather. Go, global warming!


(You may now resume your regularly scheduled program.)

 

[Subduction Zone]

Well, I meant alternative fuels. Natural gas could be a first step, but nor a solution. Hydrogen would be ideal for sure, and so would be solar.

Of course it all depends upon how you make hydrogen. Coal can be used to make hydrogen, of course with an extremely heavy CO2 footprint. If the hydrogen came from wind farms or electrical energy from a nuclear plant that would work. In fact one of the problem with wind farms is that they generate electricity at an uneven rate. By storing that energy as hydrogen those varying rates are no longer a problem.

We could also start using more electric cars, again hoping for a noncarbon based method of electricity. Tesla is making some amazing vehicles at a fairly reasonable price for a startup.

 

[grasping the after wind]

If one wishes to curb carbon emissions the surest method is global economic collapse. This also works for disparity in income levels and many other perceived inequalities.

 

[KWCrazy]

If the problem is that CO2 emissions are causing an increase in global warming, then the natural solution would be to limit the number of CO2 generators. For example, we have a plethora of homeless people, criminals, politicians and otherwise undesirable elements that we need to rid ourselves of anyway, why not solve the problem of global hunger while we’re doing it and simply eat them? Illegal aliens are high in protein and low in saturated fats. Politicians, having indwelled themselves with pork, would make great barbeque. Eliminating these CO2 generators would help the environment as well as feed the starving people in Africa, who at present are too boney to provide much of a meal anyway. Also, the alternative fuel nutcases who thought to take us back to the 16th century by littering our countryside with bird chopping windmills that kill millions of our winged friends every year would be good deep fried in strips and served in Buffalo wing sauce.

Of course, since the earth was warmer than it is now in 7000 of the last 10,000 years, maybe it isn’t quite time to panic. Maybe, just maybe, those nasty scientists who were caught falsifying their research were doing so because it’s all a lie told by the unscrupulous to the gullible. Amazingly, during many stretches of planetary history, there has been no correlation between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperature. In other long stretches, the variations of the two factors followed a significant sequence: increases in CO2 followed increases in warmth by several centuries.

Naaah! Let’s eat!!

 

[Subduction Zone]

If one wishes to curb carbon emissions the surest method is global economic collapse. This also works for disparity in income levels and many other perceived inequalities.

Sad but true.

Also if you want to take away concern about global warming all that was necessary was a global economic slowdown. It has been at least four years since AGW has been a real legislative concern of any major country that I can think of.

Now that we are coming out of the recession we can think of the future again.

 

[Split Rock]

Maybe, just maybe, those nasty scientists who were caught falsifying their research were doing so because it’s all a lie told by the unscrupulous to the gullible.

If you don't mind "creation scientists" lying to you and "creation ministry" websites full of lies, why would you care if "nasty" scientists are lying to you?

 

[KWCrazy]

If you don't mind "creation scientists" lying to you and "creation ministry" websites full of lies, why would you care if "nasty" scientists are lying to you?

I don't listen to those people. Creation wasn't scientific. It was a supernatural creation by a supernatural being who is not bound by the laws of science which He created. If I want lies about science I'll go to the evolutionists.

I don't, so I don't.

BTW, don't try to cook liver and onions with an alcoholic's liver. All that alcohol just ignites and you end up with onions flambe'.

 

[CabVet]

Illegal aliens are high in protein and low in saturated fats.

How very Christian of you.