climate change, or propaganda?

[Jonanananas]

I'm glad people aren't going apeshit over global warming anymore.

 

What can be done about global warming? Burn the oil deposits. The faster we get rid of oil, the sooner we'll get briefly overly-expensive, eco-friendly energy from Exxon-Mobile and Shell and whatnot.

 

The only problem the common man has to worry is the couple of months of the transition from oil to eco energy and fuel. Prices will be damn high, but will lower to normal levels.

Have we found another source for petroleum based plastics and other goods? We could probably live without oil as a fuel in a few years, but I'm not sure we could live without plastics.

 

There are biobased alternatives for most kinds of plastics.(All the commonly used ones, PET, PE, PA etc.) They cannot replace all of the heavily specialed plastics, but they don't need to, since the volume of production of those plastics is so small that there will be enough oil available for centuries to come basically. There are already biobased plastics being sold, they're just still a bit more expensive, and there's the same problem associated as with bio-fuel, the destruction of food-producing farmland in favor of farmland producing raw materials for plastics, fuels etc.

[ilovecuttingyews]

I'm glad people aren't going apeshit over global warming anymore.

What can be done about global warming? Burn the oil deposits. The faster we get rid of oil, the sooner we'll get briefly overly-expensive, eco-friendly energy from Exxon-Mobile and Shell and whatnot.

The only problem the common man has to worry is the couple of months of the transition from oil to eco energy and fuel. Prices will be damn high, but will lower to normal levels.

Have we found another source for petroleum based plastics and other goods? We could probably live without oil as a fuel in a few years, but I'm not sure we could live without plastics.

There are biobased alternatives for most kinds of plastics.(All the commonly used ones, PET, PE, PA etc.) They cannot replace all of the heavily specialed plastics, but they don't need to, since the volume of production of those plastics is so small that there will be enough oil available for centuries to come basically. There are already biobased plastics being sold, they're just still a bit more expensive, and there's the same problem associated as with bio-fuel, the destruction of food-producing farmland in favor of farmland producing raw materials for plastics, fuels etc.

Yeah, there are alternatives for fossil fuels for plastics, but using land for biofuels and the like isn't very good for humans as a whole. One of my professors said that a grad student in my faculty had calculated that the amount of corn it takes to make 1 hummer gas tank worth of ethanol is enough to feed a person in the less-developed world for 8-10 months. I don't know how accurate that is, but it goes to show that using crops to fuel our cars or make our plastic only ends up hurting the people that need the crops the most.

 

As the Dean of my faculty has said "petroleum should be for making plastics, and not fueling our world". Turning fossil fuels into plastic doesn't convert them into CO2 so it does nothing to influence global warming.

[obfuscator]

Bear in mind that the harvesting of fossil fuels isn't all that good for the environment in the first place though.

[sees_all1]

I think the entirety of "climate change" is a hot mess.

Five years ago it was always "Global Warming". Bleh Bleh Bleh Global Warming Bleh Bleh Bleh. Then they realized that the earth might've been cooling, so it became "Climate Change".

They never realized the Earth was cooling (except for some work done in the '60s which was based on Milankovitch cycles, which are poor indicators on planets with changing atmospheres), in fact, the more studies done, the more we find the Earth is warming faster than we previously though. The focus has switched to climate change because it's the broader problem. Global warming is only one issue withing all of climate change. Climate change includes various other factors such as changing precipitation patterns, desertification, and mass extinctions.. There is no scientific debate about whether or not the Earth is warming, but scientists have stopped calling it 'global warming' because it's only one problem of many.

And not because people started challenging the conventional wisdom?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html

 

Meanwhile, politicians realize that they can influence the entire economy by regulating carbon based fuels or CO2 emissions. Killing the world's largest free market and controlling the reins is a big government wet dream.

Markets can only truly be free with perfect information and no externalities. Both of which are not satisfied under current systems. Our current economic system is not adequate for a globalized world. Chances are that a forced labourer in the DR Congo died for the battery in your (and my) cellphones, laptops, etc. Tell me, is that price included in the purchace price? Externalities are HUGE in the globalized economy because we can ship all of the negative effects to the 'third world' and take all the possitives for ourselves.

That's a heart-wrenching story. How is it relevant to a government taking over the entire economy?

 

It's not about killing the free market, it's about making the market truly free. That includes taking everything, including the negatice impacts half way accross the world, into account. Sure, some people will profit, but the ones that do are the ones that are doing the thing that`s best for the entire global system.

Also, I`m pretty sure that under proposed `cap and trade`ideas, no one really profits except the people that reduce their CO2 emissions. You don`t buy credits from the government, you buy them from your compedators. So if you have to pay your compedator because he`s being greener than you, why don`t you go and increase your efficiencyÉ.

Right, and tell me, who decided what credits everyone are assigned? Are you naive enough to believe that there won't be any lobbying involved? How will stopping carbon fuel consumption help that child in DR Congo from dying?

 

 

Cap and trade systems fuel innovation in huge ways.

I'm sure you have dozens of examples of things that were invented because of cap and trade...

[The Dark Lord]

We could probably live without oil as a fuel in a few years

 

Very unlikely. We don't have enough biofuel production yet to sustain our needs; it takes LOTS of biomass to produce relatively little biofuel. Not to mention that it also takes up tons of farmland that we need for other things (you know, growing food). Also, ethanol's supposed to be difficult to transport, which in and of itself makes it a pain in the ass and probably not even viable in the long run.

 

Natural gas might be a good alternative. We have enough natural gas in shale deposits in the US to sustain the USA for a century, given current consumption rates. It's also very cheap. However, there's some controversy over it because water used for drilling can contaminate water deposits nearby, which can in turn contaminate our drinking water and livestock, etc. It's also suspected that fracking (the drilling process for obtaining natural gas from shale) may cause earthquakes, although this hasn't been proven yet as far as I know.

 

Hydrogen fuel isn't very efficient (just like biofuels).

 

 

Personally, what I think is perhaps the best option so far is to try to use cyanobacteria for biofuel production because it is far more efficient; leftover biomass from crop harvests could also be used. Still, the bottom line is that there really is no good alternative at the moment, although natural gas may prove to be a decent temporary alternative fuel.

[Danqazmlp]

 

And not because people started challenging the conventional wisdom?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html

 

 

''One author of the critique was the retired James Cook University professor Bob Carter. Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community. He is on the research committee at the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that has received funding from oil and tobacco companies, and whose directors sit on the boards of companies in the fossil fuel sector.''

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/minchin-denies-climate-change-manmade/2007/03/14/1173722560417.html

 

Credible sources make credible arguments.

 

I am yet to see any credible evidence against global warming, when there is a plethora of credible evidence for it.

[sees_all1]

I am yet to see any credible evidence against global warming, when there is a plethora of credible evidence for it.

http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html

Over-blown media hype is over-blown.

 

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Bad sensor placement -> bad data -> bad analysis -> over-blown headlines

 

Forgive me of being skeptical but there's been quite a bit done to disillusion me.

[Assume Nothing]

I prefer to draw data from the BBC websites - good reputation for being objective.

[ilovecuttingyews]

And not because people started challenging the conventional wisdom?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3624242/There-IS-a-problem-with-global-warming...-it-stopped-in-1998.html

When people talk about global warming, it's a long run average. The most common timeframe for human caused warming starts in ~1750 (industrial revolution). In that time, it has gone up and down, but the overriding trend is up. It stopped in the late '90s because China was using high sulphur fuels in the early days of their insane expansion. The problems is that as they look to reduce sulphur emissions (curb acid rain etc) they are no longer creating that sulphur haze that slowed the warming. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/05/science-china-pollution-climate-change-coal.html

 

That's a heart-wrenching story. How is it relevant to a government taking over the entire economy?

It was saying that the markets are not free now and the only way we can get to free markets is government intervention (because industry is more than happy doing what they're doing now). Free markets must have no externalities, and that can only happen when governments step in and say 'you must include your environmental impact in your product price' (that gov intervention is itsself a violation of some free market principles, but IMO the benefit vastly outweighs the costs). Take SO2 emmission legislation. It didn't 'take over an entire economy' as you claim. It did however force polluters to pay for the negative effects that they were causing to society.

 

Right, and tell me, who decided what credits everyone are assigned? Are you naive enough to believe that there won't be any lobbying involved? How will stopping carbon fuel consumption help that child in DR Congo from dying?

I can't tell you that lobbying won't be involved, it always is. But I have at least a little faith that governments have at least a little integrety in dealing with it. From what I've seen of the SO2 cap and trade, the government will always err on the side of cation and over allocate credits. Meaning there will be less reduction than there should be, but more than there is before the system.

 

The DRC example was tied back to the concept of externalities. In order to create a truly fair and perfect economic system, you have to include all costs. As a thought experiment, lets say that;

- 1 worker dies for every 100 tons of coltan mined in the DRC (arbitrary)

- 100 tons of coltan costs say $5M (arbitrary)

- Princeton has calculated one human life to be worth $1.54M.

Therefore, should we not include the price of the lost human life in the price of the coltan to make it $6.5M/ton? In that, you are taking into effect not just the supply and demand for coltan, but also the TRUE TOTAL COST to aquire it. The same concept occurs in tabacco sales. The health costs used to be externalized until the government stepped in and started heavily taxing it. Why? Because I shouldn't have to pay for your health care bill through my taxes (Canadian universal health care) when you knowingly did that to your own body. You should have to pay for your own decisions. That's to say that I should have to pay for the CO2 I emit that degrades air quality because I buy gasoline for my car.

 

http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Bad sensor placement -> bad data -> bad analysis -> over-blown headlines

Forgive me of being skeptical but there's been quite a bit done to disillusion me.

This was all taken into account in the paper I cited in my second post (post 7 of the topic).

[sees_all1]

[hide=sunspot stuff]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/05/spotting-the-solar-regime-shifts-driving-earths-climate/

[/hide]

Sunspots fit the temperature graphs pretty well too

 

[hide=pie chart of greenhouse gases]

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_contrib.html

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

[/hide]

CO2 is about 3.618% of all greenhouse effect sources

 

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/10/03/al-gore-getting-rich-spreading-global-warming-hysteria-media-s-help

Al Gore increased his wealth 100 fold after leaving the White House

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html

Al Gore stands to become a billionaire from Global Warming regulations.

[Danqazmlp]

[hide=sunspot stuff]

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/05/spotting-the-solar-regime-shifts-driving-earths-climate/

[/hide]

Sunspots fit the temperature graphs pretty well too

 

That graph contradicts your argument. The overall trend of the temperature shown in the bottom graph is upwards, yet the top two graphs show the sunspot activity in the last two decades either staying the same or declining. Where does this temperature increase then come from?

[sees_all1]

Or new sunspot activity triggers a new equilibrium temperature. I wouldn't care to try to explain the data, but what I do know is that the sun's activity is not on earth, unlike both temperature and greenhouse gases, which means that if any link exists its the sun causing stuff on earth, not stuff on earth causing the sun.