Sub's Alternative Energy Thread

[SB Shock]

I think you already know:pirate:

No, really what is your hypothesis?

[Maggie]

Man is heating the planet (QED) therefore, his theory is that new taxes and greater regulations that would make Americans pay more for fossil-fuel energy – is a good thing if it reduced our burning of coal, oil, and gas. But despite a Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2009–2010, President Obama never passed into law any global-warming legislation.

So what happened? In keeping with my circle of “friends” across the street – I have beat this drum before. Why is kc so adamant about the threat of global warming and why has that faith come crashing down (and I use the word “faith” deliberately - I could also add profit to the mix, higher-ed is not what it used to be or pretends to be now)?

Corruption within the climate-change industry explains some of the sudden turnoff. “Climategate” - the unauthorized 2009 release of private e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom - revealed that many of the world’s top climate scientists were knee-deep in manipulating scientific evidence to support preconceived conclusions and personal agendas. Shrill warnings about everything from melting Himalayan glaciers to shrinking polar-bear populations turned out not always to be supported by scientific facts. Then you have Solyndra (which is not the only “green” corporation that received federal funding to go belly up). Of course, it didn’t help that the world’s most prominent green spokesman, Nobel laureate Al Gore, made tens of millions of dollars from his own advocacy. And he adopted a lifestyle of jet travel and energy-hungry homes at odds with his pleas for everyone else to cut back.

But even without the corruption and hypocrisy, sincere advocates of the theory of man-made global warming themselves overreached. At news that the planet had not heated up at all during the last ten years, “global warming” gave way to “climate change” - as if to warn the public that unseasonable cold or wet weather was just as man-caused as were the old specters of drought and scorching temperatures. Then, when “climate change” was still not enough to frighten the public into action, yet a third term followed: “climate chaos.” Suddenly some “green experts” claimed that even more terrifying disasters - from periodic hurricanes and tornadoes to volcanoes and earthquakes - could for the first time be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels. At that point, serially changing the name of the problem suggested to many that there might not be such a problem after all.

We simply don’t know positively whether recent human activity has caused the planet to warm up to dangerous levels. But we do know that those who insist it has are sometimes disingenuous, often profit-minded, and nearly always impractical.

[Maggie]

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

There will never be enough evidence for deniers][/URL]

P.S. Loose the Holocaust reference - intentional or not. Sorry to be so picky; but then again would you afford me the same deference? I don't know.

[1979Shocker]

Are there some who don't believe the earth has been going through cycles of warming and cooling? I think that there are some "young earth" believers who would say we aren't in any kind of warming cycle. (Not that anyone on here is one.) The "young earth" believers say the earth is only around 6,000 years old, so they wouldn't have any reason to believe that the earth is going through cycles.

I, myself, believe in an "old earth", and that all "pure" scientific data matches up perfectly with the Genesis account.

[Kung Wu]

Someone help me out with this sentence: "The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century", which references footnote 2. The footnote says "In the 1860s, physicist John Tyndall recognized the Earth's natural greenhouse effect and suggested that slight changes in the atmospheric composition could bring about climatic variations. In 1896, a seminal paper by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius first speculated that changes in the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could substantially alter the surface temperature through the greenhouse effect." (emphasis mine)

Now I am no academian, but are the terms "suggested" and "speculated" closer to "demonstrated" or "hypothesized"?

Has it ever been, in fact, demonstrated?

[Kung Wu]

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

There will never be enough evidence for deniers. The sad part is the science is overwheming. Even your own people are saying its alarming.

Wow. I just took another look at that graph. I am actually in disbelief that NASA would display it. It's a major mathematical blunder. I can only conclude one of two things:

1). The person that made the graph is incompetent, or

2). The person that made the graph is willing to intentionally mislead the casual observer for some specific reason.

Either way it's not good. And then I have to question the person that used
it as a datapoint at NASA.

The problem with the graph? It is comparing an average over 50,000 year increments and then plotting 60 years of data without normalizing the data over the same time. The spike would practically be gone. We'd likely see a small lonely pixel slightly above the 1950 data point. Consider that there are about 50 pixels per 50,000 year "chunks", then each pixel is an average of 1000 years. So we have a 60 year sample to the right of the 1950 mark and are supposed to compare 1000 year averages with a 60 year spike. It gets worse and I'll elaborate but I doubt anyone cares.

It's continuosly publishing laughable crap like this that kills the whole global warming argument for the left.

If that graph is what you consider as evidence, you should reconsider.

[kcshocker11]

Hmm NASA or Kung WU? Who should I trust lol:pirate:

I think its a vector map!

[Kung Wu]

Hmm NASA or Kung WU? Who should I trust lol:pirate:

I think its a vector map!

I don't want you to trust me. I just want you to take a look at the graph. :)

You mean this NASA or this NASA?

[kcshocker11]

I don't want you to trust me. I just want you to take a look at the graph. :)

Done that I'll take NASA:pirate:

[SB Shock]

Done that I'll take NASA:pirate:

Today nasa may not be on the same level of the NASA once was. Unfortunately they are less about doing quality research as they used to be and they are trying re-make themselves to become relevant again as their pie continue to erode and research is pushed off into the private sector.

[Kung Wu]

Done that I'll take NASA:pirate:

Ok I give up! But ... I'll admit ... secretly I'm a big fan of global warming, I hate cold weather!

[kcshocker11]

Ok I give up! But ... I'll admit ... secretly I'm a big fan of global warming, I hate cold weather!

I knew you were! lol:glee::pirate:

[kcshocker11]

http://news.yahoo.com/ex-skeptic-tells-us-congress-climate-change-real-220221850.html

A prominent climate change skeptic told Congress on Monday he no longer doubts that global warming is real and caused by humans, and joined other scientists in urging action to stop it.

:pirate:

[SB Shock]

:pirate: Russians predict 100 years of cooling :listening_headphone

http://www.gao.spb.ru/english/astrometr/index1_eng.html

[kcshocker11]

:pirate: Russians predict 100 years of cooling :listening_headphone

http://www.gao.spb.ru/english/astrometr/index1_eng.html

Ah the old Russian argument-Everyone knows these studies were made to conform to the fear that the harm in the Russian economy out weighted the need to acknowledge Climate change. Things in Russia are changing

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Russia-Suddenly-Believes-in-Fighting-Global-Warming-112640.shtml

In late April, the Russian Federation surprised everyone by accepting the fact that humans were, in fact, responsible for global warming, and recognizing that it had to do something to prevent any further degradation of the environment.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2008081,00.html

Medvedev has not been the only person in Russia to link the ongoing heat wave to climate change. Alexei Lyakhov, head of Moscow's meteorological center, tells TIME it is "clearly part of a global phenomenon" that is hitting Russia. "We have to start taking systemic measures of adaptation. It's obvious now. Just like human beings at one point took steps to adapt to the Ice Age, we now have to adapt to this," he says, citing cuts to carbon emissions as one of the necessary adaptations.
Now that Medvedev is also acknowledging the effects of climate change, Russia's official line on the subject could start to change, Chuprov says. But he warns that convincing the public of the threat from global warming may be difficult. "The status quo can change quickly in the minds of bureaucrats if the leadership gives the signal. But in the minds of the people, myths are much more difficult to uproot," he says. As if to prove the point, Russia's largest circulation newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, ran a headline on July 31 that asked, "Is the Russian heat wave the result of the USA testing its climate weapon?" The daily's answer was "Yes, probably."

In other words quoting a Russian study is lame