Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[wufan]

A cheap way to help would be to plant trees, yet trees are bring chopped down at very fast rates. I don't completely buy into global warming, but trees absorb CO2 and if there aren't as many, then that hurts.

So I feel that if we are going to spend insane amounts of money on this, let's spend it in a way that makes more sense.

Trees release CO2 when they die. You have to be able to harvest and process them without releasing any CO2.

[wufan]

I know I typically waste most of my good hypothetical questions in the relatively uninteresting gun debate threads, but...

I think it's interesting to hear people talk about large impacts with relatively small risks. What kind of government effort would you want to see put forth toward stopping an asteroid that has a 100% chance of causing a human extinction but only a 1% chance of striking Earth? I get that this totally glosses over your point that global warming might not be a extinction-level scenario. Obviously, I'm asking you to assume that in order for global warming to be stopped we would have to act now. I'm mostly just interested in hearing how people consider this kind of analysis.

Edit: I'm particularly interested in hearing if you believe it's just a simple calculation. Is a 1% risk to all of humanity the same as a 100% risk to 1% of humanity? Would a 1% risk of extinction be just as important of a risk as the certainty of 75 million people dying from starvation (or something).

1% certainty isn't very good science. I'd suggest further study and less shock-value headlines.

[jdshock]

1% certainty isn't very good science. I'd suggest further study and less shock-value headlines.

You don't have to play along, but in the hypothetical there's a 100% chance of a 1% chance of asteroid impact. I'm just interested in hearing how people weigh the different scenarios. No further study would help us determine a greater or smaller percentage chance of impact.

[Dave Stalwart]

I'd take a bunch of guys from an oil drilling background and send them into space with a nuke so they can land on the asteroid, drill the nuke into it, and blow it into two pieces that barely miss the Earth. Unfortunately, one of them will need to stay behind after the automatic detonator gets damaged. He will have to manually blow it. Pretty emotional.

[ShockBand]

This is generally correct, but it's an oversimplification (as was my explanation above). Raw scientific measurements do point to a warming, and CO2 from humans is a part of it. The positive and negative feedback loops are intertwined and too complex for me based on the vast number of them, and their atmospheric and geographic regionality. My big issue remains: the climate models are set up in a manner that leads to a high probability of error. Major natural phenomenon are treated as afterthoughts. Policy makers push for change that is costly and ignores these important factors.

Yup. We want easy explanations and answers, but in so many things there aren't easy explanations and answers.

[MoValley John]

I'd take a bunch of guys from an oil drilling background and send them into space with a nuke so they can land on the asteroid, drill the nuke into it, and blow it into two pieces that barely miss the Earth. Unfortunately, one of them will need to stay behind after the automatic detonator gets damaged. He will have to manually blow it. Pretty emotional.

We could use the space shuttle to get there.

[MoValley John]

You don't have to play along, but in the hypothetical there's a 100% chance of a 1% chance of asteroid impact. I'm just interested in hearing how people weigh the different scenarios. No further study would help us determine a greater or smaller percentage chance of impact.

I like the method that involves Bruce Willis.


And a space shuttle.

[Cdizzle]

Any real plan should start with Steve Buscemi.

[1972Shocker]

I'd take a bunch of guys from an oil drilling background and send them into space with a nuke so they can land on the asteroid, drill the nuke into it, and blow it into two pieces that barely miss the Earth. Unfortunately, one of them will need to stay behind after the automatic detonator gets damaged. He will have to manually blow it. Pretty emotional.

That leaves me out. I am not willing to manually blow it.

[ShockerPrez]

I'd take a bunch of guys from an oil drilling background and send them into space with a nuke so they can land on the asteroid, drill the nuke into it, and blow it into two pieces that barely miss the Earth. Unfortunately, one of them will need to stay behind after the automatic detonator gets damaged. He will have to manually blow it. Pretty emotional.

We should probably send 2, just to be sure we get it good.

[MoValley John]

Any real plan should start with Steve Buscemi.

No.....

You bring Buscemi into the picture and you end up with a solution that involves him being fed into a woodchipper. Buscemi in a woodchipper ain't stoppin' no asteroid.

[Cdizzle]

Whether things ended good or bad, I've never seen Buscemi in a situation that didn't entertain me. And if the world has to end, I would at least like to be entertained.

[WstateU]

Any real plan should start with Steve Buscemi.

Damn, these things are fast.

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

I know I typically waste most of my good hypothetical questions in the relatively uninteresting gun debate threads, but...

I think it's interesting to hear people talk about large impacts with relatively small risks. What kind of government effort would you want to see put forth toward stopping an asteroid that has a 100% chance of causing a human extinction but only a 1% chance of striking Earth? I get that this totally glosses over your point that global warming might not be a extinction-level scenario. Obviously, I'm asking you to assume that in order for global warming to be stopped we would have to act now. I'm mostly just interested in hearing how people consider this kind of analysis.

Edit: I'm particularly interested in hearing if you believe it's just a simple calculation. Is a 1% risk to all of humanity the same as a 100% risk to 1% of humanity? Would a 1% risk of extinction be just as important of a risk as the certainty of 75 million people dying from starvation (or something).

If the climate debate is any indication, there would be plenty of people in this scenario bickering over the legitimacy of the science determining the 1% chance it hits us. There would be little debate over the 100% chance of it causing extinction--yet that is the most problematic statistic. An asteroid of any substantial size striking Earth, whether it would be an extinction level event or just a regional/hemispheric catastrophe, is a scenario humanity has never dealt with. We do not need to debate whether or not the asteroid could wipe out humanity, because even one too small to entirely do so could cause other innumerable unforeseen consequences, from a refuge crisis to a global financial meltdown to another dark age. In this scenario, the debate would be well-placed, because virtually any impact would be catastrophic.

The climate debate is an opposite scenario, yet we debate the same things. We don't know for sure what's going to happen, whether climate change is an extinction level event or if it's just going to make our grand children's lives a living hell, and scientists are up front about that. We don't know if the chance of human extinction is 1% or 100%. But there is a large consensus among the scientific community that global warming is happening and that humanity is at the very least partly responsible. The climate change asteroid seems to have close to a 100% chance of hitting us, considering statistics already show a global warming trend. Yet what people are bickering about is whether or not it's actually happening. Crazy.

[Kung Wu]

NOAA faked global warming data?

https://realclimatescience.com/2017/02/nasa-noaa-climate-data-is-fake-data/