# Global warming



## aleCcowaN

Some months ago I opened this thread. As the problem is still with us I'd like to update some info and comment about new proposterous developments about the fight against this problem which is weight up ranging from non-existent to Doomsday.

In that thread I complained about a lack of Winter in Buenos Aires, now I complain of our premature Summer, with ridiculous storms created and vanished in half an hour, more proper of Congo and Indonesia than these latitudes. Of course the present "El Niño" gives an important aid to these developments, and is boring and useless to comment each day the weather differs of what it used to be.

But I have some news about the proposterous steps taken by certain Kyoto Protocol signers. Some recent "good news": In order to reduce their carbon emissions, some European nations are investing in Argentina to produce up to 6 million tons of biodiesel to replace oil fuel. We have a lot of environment-caring bussiness in our near future, spread the news!

There is a little problem. 6 million tons of biodiesel need about 20 million tons of soy beans. These soy bean need about 5 million hectares (11 million acres) of new crop lands. What are they doing? They are chopping woodlands, bushlands and natural pastures to produce this soy using lots of fertilizers. As a result those 5 million hectares are going to loose most of their vegetation an organic content of the soil. What is the bottom line? Producing those 6 million tons of biodiesel to save about 6 million tons of oil fuels will produce an average of 10 million tons per year of carbon liberated by a soil that deteriorates further. But our NGP will raise, Germany and other countries will fulfill its quotas and everybody will be happy, excepting the planet as this solution will make global warming even worse. Don't panic, as in 30 years those lands will loose most of their humus and perhaps in 30 aditional years this plan will be save the exact amount of carbon it threw to the atmosphere. In two or three generations we'll slowly start to see the benefits of it.

It's simple: They are investing people's money to move the problem from some countries to others and make it worse.

Not being this enough, other pocket-but-not-environment-friendly minds are starting to study projects to deteriorate other lands in Argentina to produce ethanol from corn and make President Bush even happier. The result will be more carbon throw to the atmosphere. Argentina alone still retains at least 20 billion tons of biomass and soil humus (2 and a half year of all human actual emissions). It's our duty to preserve and enhance it, not to sell it.

A commercial company offers to plant and grow a little tree in Costa Rica if you pay about 20 sterling pounds. To make this interesting the tiny woodland is devoted to Leonardo di Caprio (There are a Brad Pitt and other starlets forests in development). These commercial iniciatives take your money to plant these miserable E! woodlands and give you the chance to clean your consciente and think you did something to solve the problem. These pocket-oriented iniciatives are much more honest than the goverment ones I comment above. At least they prevent you from filling your gas tank once.


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## ElaineG

This was a startling quote that I read today on global warming:



> "Muscovites are smiling: they don't have to wear hats and the grass is green like in some kind of England," wrote popular daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, adding Russia could only gain from a warmer global climate.
> 
> "Siberia in that case will become the world's granary and Russia will be a clear winner."


 
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12499966.htm

This reminded of my close friend who lives on Ireland's northernmost coast -- she's looking forward to living in one of the 2020s great beach resorts.

In all seriousness, I think that's what's really scary is that it's happening so fast, and one gets the feeling that it's already too late.


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## Etcetera

ElaineG said:


> This was a startling quote that I read today on global warming:
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L12499966.htm
> 
> This reminded of my close friend who lives on Ireland's northernmost coast -- she's looking forward to living in one of the 2020s great beach resorts.
> 
> In all seriousness, I think that's what's really scary is that it's happening so fast, and one gets the feeling that it's already too late.


Frankly speaking, I don't like the idea of global warming. 
When it's +11 C in St. Petersburg and +1 C in Murmansk in mid-December, it's really scary. I love winter, and I love snow, and I don't want to celebrate Christmas without snow lying all around. Now, it's simply boring - to see autumn lasting for... ough, four months by now! 
I am sure that we must do our best to stop global warming. Or our children will see snow only on pictures.


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## Sidjanga

Reading a bit on the Internet, I found this article with a related topic.

I guess while voters who believe this deceit outnumber those who protest against it, not much will be changing. 
It´s just so very easy to just believe it and calm your conscience a wee bit by doing what you believe o are made believe is at least better than doing nothing at all, or go on doing what you did before (like for example the tree planting initiative in Costa Rica, that reminds a bit of the indulgence letter trading in the middle ages).
From my point of view, the main problem in this respect is the lack of knowledge –and interest-; people are ever more lazier to read and to really get informed before deciding to do whatsoever. And maybe, halfway through the process, there feel already quite well informed and among the upper half of humanity. And I am sure that those who already buy -or those would be prepared to pay (more) money for bio diesel in the future- are certainly the better informed ones. It is sadly curious that in this particular case this should obviously be a disadvantage at global level.

"Bio diesel" sounds good, and sells well; although very sad, money rules the world and ,as long as there is or at least seems to be a market full of people prepared to pay for whatever service or product you offer, there will be somebody selfish and interested enough who has no qualms at all to put it into practice. 
You would have to make it economically a lot more attractive for the individual –and politicians and company owners, of course- not to produce and buy that stuff than to do it; or hope for a wonder and trust in that -as time goes on- people will become unselfish and considerate enough as to come to that conclusion themselves, as at least some have already done (or by reading a few more articles about it, but in this case they´d have to be already quite interested in the topic).

I think every one of us is responsible, can be an example and give impulses, not cooperating in the production(*), not buying it and informing as best we can.
But it will definitely take time -and lets hope not until there is no planet any more to be worried about-, unless someone comes up with a spell able to do away with all CO2 producing junk and similar stuff one of these days.

______________________
(*) which is of course not as easy, given that those plantations often create employment and people then depend on it economically (which serves the companies as another "good" argument to defend there cause).


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## caballoschica

http://www.columbusdispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/12/16/20061216-E1-02.html

There is some progress going on with hydrogen fuel cells....I just hope it continues to come....The last I heard was that the most efficient way to make a hydrogen fuel cell was using platinum.  As nice as it may be, with only water coming out, that's really expensive.


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## Sidjanga

I think we (will) all have to rethink our lifestile energywise, and better sooner than later start to reduce its "consumption" rather than keep increasing or at least maintaining it and taking for granted its availability.

Apart from that, (real) alternatives could be solar and wind energy.


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## caballoschica

Solar and wind energy may be viable options, but we'd need to harness them for the night and for rainy days (for solar energy that is...).  I think wind power is relatively practical, but then it also depends if the terrain is flat or mountainous as to where the wind turbines can be put.  

We definitely need to reduce consumption, but we also really need to think about alternatives.  And alternate fuels.  If Hydrogen fuel cells, could be made inexpensively, that would be fantastic!  I'm sure in the future science will come out with a way...


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## PianoMan

One of the things I'm most disgusted about the United Sates is our lack of help to stop this problem (which should be a top priority on everyone's concerns) and also our major contribution to the problem.  I think we need to start lowering our personal carbon emissions and begin funding for the planting of more trees to lower our carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere.  I do commend all those nations who contributed in the Kyoto Protocol and would like the United States to join as well.  Seeing as the Liberals now have the legislative branch and the position of speaker of the house back in Washington, I think America is finally realizing its mistakes and trying to redeem itself.  I pray that it's not too late.  I'd like to know who saw the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and if you thought it was helpful to the public or not.


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## aleCcowaN

Thank you Sigianga and caballoschica for your very interesting links. When I did my calculation of biomass in Argentina, I meant carbon, not biomass. And I made a mistake as carbon dioxide -the main cause of global warming- is much heavier than carbon. I mean, the content of carbon in Argentinian soils and nature is about 7 years of total global carbon dioxide human emissions.

Thank all of you for your valuable comments. I think too that wind is the most important alternative source of energy. 

In the late thread about this subject I mentioned above, someone commented that Spain was producing electricity from wind at a price 6 times over the electricity generated by means of fossile fuels. I have some comments to do about this: The average cost of windmills in Europe is about 1,400,000 usd (US dollars) per kilowatt of installed power. The problem is that wind is not constant and you don't have it when you need it. The typical Eurpoean windmill is designed to reach full power for medium speed winds, that is, winds from 30 to 60 kilometer perl hour. There is a concept, the capacity factor, that measures the percentage of full potencial electricity generation you got in one years. The best values for Europe, as far as I know are in North Sea close to Germany and Denmark, many miles off-shore. That capacity factor is 32%, meaning the wind mill produced electricity as if it were functioning only 32% of the time at full power and off the rest of the time. And it produced that electricity when nature wanted, not when you needed it.

With these costs -especially building a windmill in the North Sea- an this good but not optimum capacity factor is expectable wind energy comes to be very expensive. And Spain is not characterized for its strong and constant winds.

On the other hand, here, in Chilean and Argentinian Patagonia, we have stronger and more constant winds. Recently and many years later than it was supposed to be, the Argentinian Government sign a contract with local company INVAP -a local high tech company that exported nuclear reactors to Australia and Peru, and designed, built and run heavy water plant, etc.- to refine our wind mill technology and produce 24 windmills. These are the numbers: winds from 40 to 80 km/hour for maximum power; 800,000 usd perl kilowatt installed (40% less than in Europe), capacity factor of 49% in Pico Truncado, 46% average in San Jorge Gulf -inland, not off-shore-, an over 40% in almost all the region. Then, the cost of producing 1Mwatt-hour of electricity is about 28 usd. Watch the actual costs of electricity in Bloomberg or other finantial site and you see prices from 42 to 55 usd in USA and Europe.

Wind power is clean, renewable, and it is very cheap if you choose the right locations (Patagonia, Newfoundland, Novaya Zemlya, etc.) and technology.
Don't deserve this a minor fraction of the trillion dollars spent each year in militar expenses? Let's write to our congressmen!


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## Pedro y La Torre

Get Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol then maybe we can make some progress, but until the world's biggest polluter gets its act together and starts caring more about the environment than its economy well, its only going to get worse.


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## Victoria32

Etcetera said:


> Frankly speaking, I don't like the idea of global warming.
> When it's +11 C in St. Petersburg and +1 C in Murmansk in mid-December, it's really scary. I love winter, and I love snow, and I don't want to celebrate Christmas without snow lying all around. Now, it's simply boring - to see autumn lasting for... ough, four months by now!
> I am sure that we must do our best to stop global warming. Or our children will see snow only on pictures.



Grr... I am sitting here freezing my buns off in a New Zealand 'summer' - one of those things we used to have in the 1980s, a summer and have not had since about 1992. 

*We are going to have a white Christmas, yes, we are going to have snow in the South Island at Christmas. In summer. So yes, do tell me all about this Global Warming - if it is true, we could certainly do with having some of it! 

*Vicky


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## PianoMan

Global warming doesn't necessarily imply a lack of snow, it's not that snow's dissapearing, rather the permanent locations (glaciers, mountain snow caps, polar ice caps) are melting. And some areas of the globe are receiving more percipitation while others aren't. What global warming does is make the weather very abnormal or exaggerated. So, in essence, it's quite possible that your snowy summer in N.Z. might be because of global warming.



Pedro y La Torre said:


> Get Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol then maybe we can make some progress, but until the world's biggest polluter gets its act together and starts caring more about the environment than its economy well, its only going to get worse.


 
I couldn't agree more, it's things like that, that make me ashamed to be American right now. Honestly, our family's doing what it can to lower our carbon emissions as far as lighting and home appliances go, I ride my bike whenever I can avoid taking a car, and our cars are compacts, soon to by Hybrids. America's leaders might not be doing what's right, but many of its citizens are trying...but definitely not enough.


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## Québec-Jakarta

Kyoto protocol have big flaws...  You want to see the problem, look to the east.  South-asian countries have praticaly no environemental laws, mostly because they have other serious problems to deal with, like in all developping countries.  So?  Any business who want to escape the environemental laws in their own countries are coming to Indonesia, for exemple.  At the moment, the Java sea is thick black around Jakarta, there's so much smog it makes Hollywood looks like the Canadian prairies.  The problem is just moving, not changing.


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## aleCcowaN

PianoMan said:


> One of the things I'm most disgusted about the United Sates is our lack of help to stop this problem (which should be a top priority on everyone's concerns) and also our major contribution to the problem. I think we need to start lowering our personal carbon emissions and begin funding for the planting of more trees to lower our carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. I do commend all those nations who contributed in the Kyoto Protocol and would like the United States to join as well. Seeing as the Liberals now have the legislative branch and the position of speaker of the house back in Washington, I think America is finally realizing its mistakes and trying to redeem itself. I pray that it's not too late. I'd like to know who saw the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and if you thought it was helpful to the public or not.





Pedro y La Torre said:


> Get Bush to sign the Kyoto Protocol then maybe we can make some progress, but until the world's biggest polluter gets its act together and starts caring more about the environment than its economy well, its only going to get worse.



I'd really like USA to sign Kyoto Protocol, but I'd like that Protocol to be better too. President Bush and his ethanol initiative is a good example of no-no policies and the inspirer of the potential damages I exposed in the first post of this thread. Using food as a source of fuel only lead to a sharp raise of its prices given the elasticity of its demand -or its lack-, but he expects to have some million conservative farmers happy and hide the fact that soil deterioration contribute with more carbon dioxide than corn ethanol could save.

I'd like to watch "An Inconvenient Truth". I hope I will soon see it in TV.

Soil deterioration, concrete industry, woodlands destruction and coal consumption are the largest contribuitors to global warming. Ill-consumption of petroleum completes the scape.

I think mankind learnt a hard lesson from '29 economical crisis: Having all the countries closed their economies led to a deeper economical crisis, and the relative commerce freedom we have today is producing the sharpest economical growth in history.

By analogy, we have to undestand that global warming is not solved by isolated measures applied by, for and inside each individual country. Each poluter -person, bussiness or country- must contribute to its relief but money should be sent to the corner of Earth where it maximizes the outcome. IMF and World Bank have tens of billion dollars unused (Argentina repaid its 9.4 billion debt with IMF one year ago and the money is there sleeping). As that money comes from taxpayers all around the country (3.1 billions from Argentinian, about 1% of IMF total funds), is that proposterous thinking about that money could be better invested in preserving rain forests, promoting soil recovery worlwide, erecting thousand of windmills in Patagonia, Hudson Bay and Northern Siberia, and financing edge technology in engines and electricity cells?



Victoria32 said:


> Grr... I am sitting here freezing my buns off in a New Zealand 'summer' - one of those things we used to have in the 1980s, a summer and have not had since about 1992.
> 
> *We are going to have a white Christmas, yes, we are going to have snow in the South Island at Christmas. In summer. So yes, do tell me all about this Global Warming - if it is true, we could certainly do with having some of it!
> 
> *Vicky


That is happening because of "El Niño", and abnormal phenomenon that now is becoming the standard. I'm not surprised this summer it'll snow in Dunedin or even Christchurch, Sydney will be fighting fires and Buenos Aires will continue to stand heavy rains and hail between periods of unbearable heat. All is part of the same problem: Global climate is starting to go like a ship without helm.



Québec-Jakarta said:


> Kyoto protocol have big flaws...  You want to see the problem, look to the east.  South-asian countries have praticaly no environemental laws, mostly because they have other serious problems to deal with, like in all developping countries.  So?  Any business who want to escape the environemental laws in their own countries are coming to Indonesia, for exemple.  At the moment, the Java sea is thick black around Jakarta, there's so much smog it makes Hollywood looks like the Canadian prairies.  The problem is just moving, not changing.


 I totally agree. Developing countries are not out of the picture, as we are -if not the larger contribuitors to global warming- the main contribuitors to its growth. But again, being USA the country with 23% of total greenhouse gases emision and 30% of twenty century's, it should pay between 23 and 30% of the costs of solve or at least moderate the problem. Starting with its 17% share with IMF (55 billions) would be good. But again, political power is above any moral and practical consideration, and USA as a "mega-tribe" behaves in a way each American as individual would swear she or he never would do.

By the way, my good news is that my natural gas saving plan worked (heat regulated from 21° -70F- to 18° -65F-) and with some aditional insulation and the aid of global warming itself, I get a refund and a prize in my Spring bill, and I had to pay just 1.20 $ . A not-needed revision of my refrigerator lowered my energy bill (my freezer died, but that is a horse of different color). I avoided about half a ton of carbon dioxide emission this year (1/16billionth of whole human emissions). Is it nothing? Maybe, but being I just 1/6,200,000,000 of mankind I think I did something. Let's multiply by millions such effect.


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## TRG

Here are my thoughts on global warming, but first let me say that I am a chemical engineer and did work for a long time in the petroleum refining industry, so I have some basic understanding of how the world obtains and uses energy and the basic science and technology of energy.

1. It would be good if we didn't need fossil fuels and could meet our energy needs in other ways. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This is mostly driven by economics. In order for other forms of energy to be competitive with fossil fuels, the price of energy simply needs to be much higher. This does two things. First, it encourages conservation and second, it makes it possible for alternative energy sources to enter the market. There are a number of myths which get perpetuated in the popular culture about energy. One is that the switch to alternative sources of energy is thwarted by "big oil". Having worked for "big oil", I can say with complete confidence that this is untrue. If you don't believe me then I challenge you to provide some evidence that this is happening. Another is that we could be using alternative technologies, but it requires some government action or support to make it happen. Problem is, the technology is not there and the economics don't work. There is no easy answer in this area. I wish there were and I wish we could stop pumping oil, but we can't.

2. Anecdotal evidence of changing climate and its relationship to global climate change means nothing. Just because we have a bad hurricane season doesn't mean you can say it's evidence of global warming. This hurricane season should convince you of that. So if you ever catch yourself about to say, "well, that's due to global warming", just scratch that thought.

3. The earth's climate is not an unchanging thing and the earth is not in a state of perpetual equilibrium without the influence of man. The climate can change without us doing anything. We are clearly warming right now and I believe some of that is likely due to human activity, greenhouse gases, etc. The problem is knowing how much and how fast. Predicting climate in the long term is very difficult.

4. Kyoto, even if fully implemented, would not have a noticeable impact on the amount of expected warming. Second, even the countries that have adopted Kyoto are having a lot of trouble meeting their goals. Ok, you can give them credit for trying, but that's it. For the reasons they are not meeting their goals, see point 1.

5. If people like Al Gore believed everything they said about global warming the first thing they would do is demand that we stop burning coal and switch to nuclear power. This is a direct quote from Al Gore: "I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role than it does now". Nuclear power is proven technology that produces zero GHG emissions. France gets most of it's power from nukes. True, we have radioactive waste to deal with, but which is worse, a global climate catastrophy or having a small part of the planet dedicated to dispose of nuclear waste? So ask yourself, why isn't Al Gore vigorously promoting nuclear power? I think the reason is that, not being an engineer or scientist or economist, he does not understand point 1.

6. The media is focused on the more sensational and negative aspects of GW and is helping to create an atmospher of hysteria. There are some areas of the world that would benefit from a warmer climate and some plants and animals would benefit from it. There is just too much that we don't know to got jumping off the economic cliff, which is what some alarmists seem to be advocating.

7. Some would like to the government to take command of the economy as a way to reduce oil consumption. The CAFE is a good example of this. The simplest and best to make this happen would be to do what Europe does. Put a tax on gasoline sufficient to cause people to change their driving and car buying behavior. The additional revenue can be used to subsidize alternative energy use. I would also point out that in Europe where gas costs twice what it does in the US, people are still driving cars fueled with petroleum. The bureaucracy for collecting taxes is already in place so it is the fairest and most efficient way to promote energy efficiency.

That's enough for now, but I'll be happy to answer questions or discuss further.

Here is a thoughtful analysis of the "state of the debate" if you are interested.


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## Victoria32

aleCcowaN said:


> That is happening because of "El Niño", and abnormal phenomenon that now is becoming the standard.


I respectfully disagree... We've heard that it is El Nino before - when we had a *hot *year (1998) and I think El Nino has become a kind of catch-all cover for "heck, we don't know why!".

We are going to have a 'high' of 16 degrees today. In the 1980s, a high at this time in December would have been in the early 20s. 

In about 2004, I saw an interesting graph in New Scientist. It showed that global temperatures had done two things... in the Northern Hemishere there had been a rise of 1 degree Celsius in the past 50 years. In the Southern Hemisphere there had been a corresponding drop of 1 degree over the same period. According to Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel, a large part of the South Island of New Zealand is only marginally habitable (it's too cold)._If we have much more of this "global warming", there will be a tide of New Zealanders seeking refuge in Australia from cold! 

_I prefer to call it local warming. Cities in the USA and Britain seem to have experienced strictly local temperature rises, but elsewhere the temperature is plummeting. My son's girlfriend is from Scotland, which is hardly tropical. Last week, as they walked down the main street of our city, they were pulling their jackets tight around them ahd she was complaining bitterly about the cold. (I know what I am talking about - my great-grandparents on my mother's side were from the failed Scottish Presbyterian commune/colony in Nova Scotia. They were among the survivors - the rest froze/starved to death because of the cold. They came to the South Island of New Zealand, froze, and moved North to Auckland to thaw out. Big mistake! 



Vicky


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## aleCcowaN

TRG said:


> Here are my thoughts on global warming, but first let me say that I am a chemical engineer and did work for a long time in the petroleum refining industry, so I have some basic understanding of how the world obtains and uses energy and the basic science and technology of energy.


Happy to have you with us on this topic.


TRG said:


> 1. It would be good if we didn't need fossil fuels and could meet our energy needs in other ways. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This is mostly driven by economics. In order for other forms of energy to be competitive with fossil fuels, the price of energy simply needs to be much higher. This does two things. First, it encourages conservation and second, it makes it possible for alternative energy sources to enter the market. There are a number of myths which get perpetuated in the popular culture about energy. One is that the switch to alternative sources of energy is thwarted by "big oil". Having worked for "big oil", I can say with complete confidence that this is untrue. If you don't believe me then I challenge you to provide some evidence that this is happening. Another is that we could be using alternative technologies, but it requires some government action or support to make it happen. Problem is, the technology is not there and the economics don't work. There is no easy answer in this area. I wish there were and I wish we could stop pumping oil, but we can't.


Fortunately, in this thread and its precursor (the link is on the first post), there were very few referencies to oil industry and its "power". That power exist and there's nothing illegitimate in it. I defend my private property against intruders, other ones do so, save they have a much bigger property to defend, and do it loudly and constantly. There's no conspiracy theory to get from those facts, but forgive me if I don't buy fables like the one about a poor litle wolf complaining to the shepherd "those malicious sheeps wanted to eat my! Bad them! Please! Protect me!"


TRG said:


> 2. Anecdotal evidence of changing climate and its relationship to global climate change means nothing. ...
> 
> 3. The earth's climate is not an unchanging thing and the earth is not in a state of perpetual equilibrium without the influence of man. The climate can change without us doing anything. We are clearly warming right now and I believe some of that is likely due to human activity, greenhouse gases, etc. The problem is knowing how much and how fast. Predicting climate in the long term is very difficult.


Two facts that are roughly true, but let start to discuss what I think you intended to bring to this "arena" with the link you provided. Is public discussion not valid because common people have not enough logical training and general education to filter their feelings and thoughts? Are people adding pressure on politicians based on fear? and most of all, are people and press confusing the scientific community by backing bad scientists and institutions only based they identificate with their opinions? Is the scientific community loosing its objectivity in this subject?

It's well known the kind of phrases like "it rains every weekend", "I always lost my bus or subway when I go to work", cases of an observer selecting what to observe as the consequences affects him. A heavy hurricane season, or major droughts don't let us to reach the conclusion is all about global warming. But consistent patterns surely do.

Again, what is global warming? the average global temperature is raising with a consistent trend since there are registers world wide. The question is, is it caused because "the earth's climate is not an unchanging thing and the earth is not in a state of perpetual equilibrium" or purely by human intervention? As we suffer the Little Ice Age some centuries ago, it would be natural the planet get warmer during some centuries.

But evidence suggests mankind has the major role in this phaenomenon. But I may not being able to prove it here. Why? Because there are tons of papers written with such evidence, its datum, its conclusions, its discussions and its counterarguments. It's like the recent meeting in Iran declaring Holocaust to be a hoax. The typical argument is, "6 million died? name them one by one". It's the logical case of something hard to prove in the public arena because the evidence is overwhealming. And this only triggers epistemological hedonism (if you like it or at least it excites your imagination or fear, then believe it's true). I mean, in this threads we assume global warming exists and is trigger or at least heavily aided by human intervention, and are greenhouse gases the main cause of it, despite of the fact Gea has adapted even to heavy meteorites that extincted up to 90% of planet species, and surely will survive to mankind do-whatever-we-like.


TRG said:


> 4. Kyoto, even if fully implemented, would not have a noticeable impact on the amount of expected warming. Second, even the countries that have adopted Kyoto are having a lot of trouble meeting their goals. Ok, you can give them credit for trying, but that's it. For the reasons they are not meeting their goals, see point 1.


Would it not have a noticeable impact because the measures have nothing to do with global warming? or because they are a warm but yet hard to implement effort in the right direction?


TRG said:


> 5. If people like Al Gore believed everything they said about global warming the first thing they would do is demand that we stop burning coal and switch to nuclear power. This is a direct quote from Al Gore: "I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role than it does now". Nuclear power is proven technology that produces zero GHG emissions. France gets most of it's power from nukes. True, we have radioactive waste to deal with, but which is worse, a global climate catastrophy or having a small part of the planet dedicated t... 1.


I personally agree with nukes and regret my country had to overcome so many international pressure an menaces to be now just starting its third nuclear central ( nuclear power produced in Argentina only 5% of electrical energy, against the 20 to 30% of USA and France). 

I dislike the all-ecological dudes that protest for the minimal act of human spoiling. But the whole planet or complete ecosystems, are horse of a different color. I even think those nature-lovers are in fact dangerous in some way as they deviate resources and attention to their focal interests, and defocus the major scope of what is happening worldscale.


TRG said:


> 6. The media is focused on the more sensational and negative aspects of GW and is helping to create an atmospher of hysteria. There are some areas of the world that would benefit from a warmer climate and some plants and animals would benefit from it. There is just too much that we don't know to got jumping off the economic cliff, which is what some alarmists seem to be advocating.


 I agree partially, there's no doomsday around the corner. But based on what I read in point 4, we need strong measures as it'll probably take decades to moderate this problem.


TRG said:


> 7. Some would like to the government to take command of the economy as a way to reduce oil consumption. The CAFE is a good example of this. The simplest and best to make this happen would be to do what Europe does. Put a tax on gasoline sufficient to cause people to change their driving and car buying behavior. The additional revenue can be used to subsidize alternative energy use. I would also point out that in Europe where gas costs twice what it does in the US, people are still driving cars fueled with petroleum. The bureaucracy for collecting taxes is already in place so it is the fairest and most efficient way to promote energy efficiency.


That's exactly what I said in the previous thread. Tax policies may be the most important instrument. That's what I'm promoting, people awared the problem exists, doing responsible choices in their daily life, and most of all, at the moment of casting their vote.

I'm not much tolerant with epystemological hedonism, nor with people with some degree of scientific education that may think they are vaccinated against logical blunders. We debate and even argue, but we should to devote most of the time to realize how our conclusions emerge and not to draw conclusions.

It's a matter of type I or type II error. I hate inconsistencies. It's not accetable a country spending 500 billion dollars a year in "security" because another country can may coul might only-time-will-tell weather-permitting in-the-long-run perhaps will be some time able to have or not massive destruction weapons (because our many thousand megatons of nuclear weapons are not massively destructive being us the good ones and John Wayne's pals) and then warmly arguing it is not proven global warming by human intervention even exists. I ask the same treatment to both issues.

That common people generally haven't means to dig the whole truth doesn't imply all of us must go our life hearing "you quite, you calm down, nothing happens, it's not your bussiness". And hear both bells is good, but buy the conclusion the subject is not clear is a goof -the 0 degree argument: nor hot nor cold-.

Finally, I get ill only imagining poluting industry managers in their air-conditioned environments wasting all the resources needed to correct the consequencies of the climate changes they contributed with, and eating kosher food and other certificate delikatessen, just because their are pure and clean, not contaminated, and they afford this with the extra-earnings produced by their activities going without governmental control and right policies.


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## aleCcowaN

Victoria32 said:


> I respectfully disagree... We've heard that it is El Nino before - when we had a *hot *year (1998) and I think El Nino has become a kind of catch-all cover for "heck, we don't know why!".
> 
> We are going to have a 'high' of 16 degrees today. In the 1980s, a high at this time in December would have been in the early 20s.
> 
> In about 2004, I saw an interesting graph in New Scientist. It showed that global temperatures had done two things... in the Northern Hemishere there had been a rise of 1 degree Celsius in the past 50 years. In the Southern Hemisphere there had been a corresponding drop of 1 degree over the same period. According to Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel, a large part of the South Island of New Zealand is only marginally habitable (it's too cold)._If we have much more of this "global warming", there will be a tide of New Zealanders seeking refuge in Australia from cold!
> 
> _I prefer to call it local warming. Cities in the USA and Britain seem to have experienced strictly local temperature rises, but elsewhere the temperature is plummeting. My son's girlfriend is from Scotland, which is hardly tropical. Last week, as they walked down the main street of our city, they were pulling their jackets tight around them ahd she was complaining bitterly about the cold. (I know what I am talking about - my great-grandparents on my mother's side were from the failed Scottish Presbyterian commune/colony in Nova Scotia. They were among the survivors - the rest froze/starved to death because of the cold. They came to the South Island of New Zealand, froze, and moved North to Auckland to thaw out. Big mistake!
> 
> 
> 
> Vicky


Hi Vicky! I'd change locations with you.

This is the map on December 6

As you can see, sea temperatures around Southern Island were about 1 to 1.5°C lower than the average for the date. You see a weak "Niño" at the Ecuador (up to +2°). As you can see, around Argentina we had cold seas at that date, but the "Niño" -in fact southern oscilation- influence started to be felt in October with rather hot and relative dry conditions, and these days is becoming rainy and wet with normal temperatures. 

I can't traduce the whole article of SMN but they say the phenomenon in November was in Central and American Pacific. You may felt the effects 3 or 4 months later than us. Is expected here to end in southern automm. They expect for Summer normal temperatures in most of the country with higher rainfalls, except for Southern Patagonia (Comodoro Rivadavia is about the same latitude of Christchurch) where they expect a temperatures below the normal for the season. This is what we usually get when this soft "baby boy" is around.

I don't know how and when this may affect New Zealand. Maybe *Bureau of Meteorology of  Australia* or your country's have some info and forecasts about this development in your region.


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## PianoMan

Here's just a general statement for those who doubt the credibility of global warming, whether or not you think it's happening, we should still act just the same as we do if we belive global warming is a reality. It doesn't hurt to take the utmost care for the environment that we are blessed to have in the first place. It should not be a matter of "we have non-believers and believers and they should plan their lives accordingly", even if you don't think it's happening, that's irrelevant. As long as you do what you can to help the environment that's all we ask.


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## Victoria32

aleCcowaN said:


> Hi Vicky! I'd change locations with you.
> 
> This is the map on December 6
> 
> As you can see, sea temperatures around Southern Island were about 1 to 1.5°C lower than the average for the date. You see a weak "Niño" at the Ecuador (up to +2°). As you can see, around Argentina we had cold seas at that date, but the "Niño" -in fact southern oscilation- influence started to be felt in October with rather hot and relative dry conditions, and these days is becoming rainy and wet with normal temperatures.
> 
> I can't traduce the whole article of SMN but they say the phenomenon in November was in Central and American Pacific. You may felt the effects 3 or 4 months later than us. Is expected here to end in southern automm. They expect for Summer normal temperatures in most of the country with higher rainfalls, except for Southern Patagonia (Comodoro Rivadavia is about the same latitude of Christchurch) where they expect a temperatures below the normal for the season. This is what we usually get when this soft "baby boy" is around.
> 
> I don't know how and when this may affect New Zealand. Maybe *Bureau of Meteorology of  Australia* or your country's have some info and forecasts about this development in your region.


We have already been told, that in effect, we will not really have a summer this year/next year - by the calendar, spring is September-November and summer is December-February. Expected temperatures were once (in the 1980s) a rise around 16 C in September to a high of 28 in January, falling off again in March. 22nd December would once have had a high of 22 to 24 degrees, today's high was 16. That's a bit less than 1.5 degrees cooler! 

PianoMan, my view is that care for the environment and Global warming hysteria are two different things. I can (and do) care for the environment, but when my son leaves for work at 06.00 *in summer with two jackets *on, and *when I am sitting here in mid-afternoon, with my winter clothes on in summer,* there is something wrong. El Nino isn't the explanation, no way! 

Vicky 
The way I feel right now, hands too cold to type without mistakes, I want to say, 'hey, push some of that global warming our way, we need it!'


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## aleCcowaN

Victoria32 said:


> We have already been told, that in effect, we will not really have a summer this year/next year - by the calendar, spring is September-November and summer is December-February. Expected temperatures were once (in the 1980s) a rise around 16 C in September to a high of 28 in January, falling off again in March. 22nd December would once have had a high of 22 to 24 degrees, today's high was 16. That's a bit less than 1.5 degrees cooler!
> 
> PianoMan, my view is that care for the environment and Global warming hysteria are two different things. I can (and do) care for the environment, but when my son leaves for work at 06.00 *in summer with two jackets *on, and *when I am sitting here in mid-afternoon, with my winter clothes on in summer,* there is something wrong. El Nino isn't the explanation, no way!
> 
> Vicky
> The way I feel right now, hands too cold to type without mistakes, I want to say, 'hey, push some of that global warming our way, we need it!'


Briefly, in my brought-beyond-my-abilities English, first I assume you are at Christchurch -I don't know the place but Southern Island-. Weather channel (so-so info, in my opinion) tells us what happened there this month and what they forecast for the rest of it. The average high temperature for 1-22 Dec was 17.6°. The average low for the same period was 7.8°. The same site inform historical averages day by day for December (one decade, two decades,...?). And the averages for 1 to 22 Dec were 18.9° and 10.1° respectively (+1.3 and +2.3°  over this month's averages). You also can see a sharp raise in "normal" daily averages for December -more than 4° along the month- as what is usual in that city.

If you look again the map in post #18. That blue meaning up to 1.5° under average sea temperatures around New Zealand implies strong an persistent winds mainly form SW. If you live close to the Eastern Coast of Southern Island (as most inhabitants do) that means that cooler and stronger than usual SW winds predominate and they have to climb the mountains, loose part of their humidity, get even cooler an then fall over the Eastern Coast. The result expected is temperatures about 2 o maybe 3° below the expected ones, with much lower "feelings" (I don't know how to say the temperature you seem to feel. We call, literally translated, "termic feeling") because of the strong winds, and persistent showers as the cool air masses reach open Pacific. This doesn't surprise me at all, as we switch in last 10-12 months from a very weak "Niña" to a weak "Niño" and the change is not fully propagated to Australia and New Zealand (see that map again). 

Maybe you or another person could cast light about these developments suggesting one or a few links with forecasts and analisis. As I said, we have the same developing in our southern land, but we have now in Central and North Argentina the rainy conditions associated to "El Niño". I wouldn't be surprised if droughs started in a couple of month in Queensland and you lived a hot Automm in your country with April much warmer than December. And even Aucklanders complaining in May about hot and tropical storms. Let's then promise to update this thread that time instead of practising futurology.

Ah! and let's set apart no-ways and such comments without references and foundation, the same basis that should be provided to "in the Northern Hemishere there had been a rise of 1 degree Celsius in the past 50 years. In the Southern Hemisphere there had been a corresponding drop of 1 degree over the same period". Searching for "temperature southern northern hemisphere" in New Scientist website returned few articles for 2004, late 2003 and early 2005, none of them with an abstrant related to the paragraph above. As I remember, termperatures have raised in both hemispheres, but in a slower fashion in ours, as we have little emerging land and "a lot" of sea. Things like Northern Hemisphere getting warmer and the other one getting cooler by one degree only happens in April as seasons change. To have that change of yearly hemispherical averages over 50 years, Earth's orbit must have been severely altered (maybe when it was noticeably accelerated by astronomical forces I was asleep).

As it was said "Anecdotal evidence of changing climate and its relationship to global climate change means nothing". We have in our country the unique glacier which is still growing instead of dissapearing (Perito Moreno) as global warming doesn't mean each place in the Earth is going to become warmer. You have glaciers too in beautiful Southern Island -which I expect to visit in some uncertain future-, are they expanding too? If they are contracting, why is the Island becoming cooler? is that only a Summer effect? What has the New Zealand weather forecast office to say about?


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## Mate

PianoMan said:


> Here's just a general statement for those who doubt the credibility of global warming, whether or not you think it's happening, we should still act just the same as we do if we belive global warming is a reality. It doesn't hurt to take the utmost care for the environment that we are blessed to have in the first place. It should not be a matter of "we have non-believers and believers and they should plan their lives accordingly", even if you don't think it's happening, that's irrelevant. As long as you do what you can to help the environment that's all we ask.


Californian PianoMan, 

I'm with you all the way! 

From this large and beautiful South American city which is right now showing unusual -and unbearable- high temperatures, where even the leaves on the trees are burning brown, I send you and everyone else attending to this hot thread my best wishes for the years to come  .

Merry Christmas - Happy Hannukah - Namaste - Mateamargo


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## Mate

> "...with much lower "feelings" (I don't know how to say the temperature you seem to feel. We call, literally translated, "termic feeling")..."


Sensación térmica = _real feel_ (más frecuente)_ o __thermal sensation_ (menos).

Un caluroso saludo - Mate

PS: querido aleC: por favor vaciá tu casilla de mensajes privados. Te mandé uno bastante largo y me salió que tenés la casilla llena. Lástima. M


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## Mate

*La elevación del nivel del mar será más rápida y el doble de lo previsto*​ 
La NASA prevé que devastadores ciclones asolarán NY en 2050

El calentamiento climático podría desencadenar una elevación del nivel del mar más rápido de lo previsto, así como alcanzar 1,40 metros de aquí a 2100, lo que supone el doble de las estimaciones establecidas hasta el momento, según un estudio publicado esta semana. Esta previsión aumenta los riesgos de inundaciones de regiones costeras y aumenta las amenazas de violentas tormentas en ciudades como Nueva York o Londres. Según la OMM, 2006 ha sido el sexto año más cálido desde que se comenzaron a hacer los registros en 1861 . Científicos de la NASA, utilizando modelos informáticos, añaden que en 2050 el nivel del mar aumentará en la ciudad de Nueva York entre 0,3 y 1 metro, y entre 0,2 y 1,8 metros en toda la región metropolitana para 2080.   

Source (highly recommended) 

Mateamargo


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## Poetic Device

It's funny that I found *this* thread today. I just watched this on the History channel last night, and it was pretty scary. If anyone has this channel, I definately reccomend watching it... It shows again Sunday at 1:00 EST.


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## Estiben

Mateamargo said:


> Sensación térmica = _real feel_ (más frecuente)_ o __thermal sensation_ (menos).
> 
> Un caluroso saludo - Mate



In the States, we call it "wind chill", the more wind or less humidity, the colder it feels. I sympathize with you, Vicky, I don't like it cold, either. However, I tend to think your problem is "local" in a sense. There is a broad area of colder than normal temperatures. It indicates that the earth is an extremely complicated system, and we truely don't know what is going to result from our "improvements". On the other hand, many of the predictions seem to be bearing out in a frightening way. I think I am going to miss the Florida Everglades.


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## TRG

Poetic Device said:


> It's funny that I found *this* thread today. I just watched this on the History channel last night, and it was pretty scary. If anyone has this channel, I definately reccomend watching it... It shows again Sunday at 1:00 EST.


 
It's true that if one stops to consider what can happen to the earth when viewed from a geologic time perspective it can be very frightening. However, in the context of everything that could go wrong with our world, global warming is just a blip. Nevertheless, people are looking at GW in the same way as these other potential global catastrophies and it is frightening them. I believe this is unnecessary as there is little or nothing the average person can do about it and no amount of angst is going to change that. I believe that, in time, people will learn to live with the concept and stop worrying about it in much the same way the you will eventually stop fretting about the possibility that you may be living atop a supervolcanoe. There is nothing you can do about either one, so enjoy your life while you can.


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## Mate

TRG said:


> It's true that if one stops to consider what can happen to the earth when viewed from a geologic time perspective it can be very frightening. However, in the context of everything that could go wrong with our world, global warming is just a blip. Nevertheless, people are looking at GW in the same way as these other potential global catastrophies and it is frightening them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I disagree. As a farmer and father of two I cannot stand the idea of seeing GW just as a blip. It´s a threat. Perhaps the one that will wipe off all life on our planet for good.
> 
> 
> 
> I believe this is unnecessary as there is little or nothing the average person can do about it and no amount of angst is going to change that. I believe that, in time, people will learn to live with the concept and stop worrying about it in much the same way the you will eventually stop fretting about the possibility that you may be living atop a supervolcanoe. There is nothing you can do about either one, so enjoy your life while you can.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

 
I strongly disagree. We are all responsible for this mess. One thing we must do is to devote at least part of our lives to make every possible effort to stop and reverse GW. 

As PianoMan said above: 





> "...whether or not you think it's happening, we should still act just the same as we do if we belive global warming is a reality. It doesn't hurt to take the utmost care for the environment that we are blessed to have in the first place. It should not be a matter of "we have non-believers and believers and they should plan their lives accordingly", even if you don't think it's happening, that's irrelevant. As long as you do what you can to help the environment that's all we ask."


 
Thanks again, Piano 

Mateamargo


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## aleCcowaN

Discussing this kind of issues always brings the doomsday aproach and the hedonistic-cannot-do-nothing approach. Besides, interpreting the diverse factors taking part of GW and the biased way it is generally exposed, overwhelms the average person, and the matter becomes more a Rorschach inkblot test of what is in each one's mind than a serious bussiness about which everybody have to reach a certain degree of compromise.

Is a matter of moral consideration. Are we entitled to do whatever we can and pleases us disregarding future consequences? I think not. Any individual can modify a bit his or her own habits, and has the right of voting. Use it to say you are aware of GW and you accept tax changes to move the burden of them to activities that have shown to be damaging to the environment: European-Japanese-Latin American-like gasoline taxes in USA and Canada; aditional taxes on concrete industry to foster production of less poluting cement. A movement towards carbon, methane and other greenhouse gases emisions taxation worldwide, a relief to GHG savers, prizes for carbon sequestration, subsidies for less poluting energy production. Mainly, global scale and consistency along decades.

This problem is serious, slow and its tendency is to become worse. Then, we have time but we must start yesterday. Global taxes are above 15 trillion USD, IMF has 100 billions unused. We pay a share of this money. We contribute with a share of this problem. We have a share of its relief. This is what we have for being "average", but we shouldn't be "mediocre", an English word having Latin "average" in its origin. Is up to each one.


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## Poetic Device

TRG said:


> It's true that if one stops to consider what can happen to the earth when viewed from a geologic time perspective it can be very frightening. However, in the context of everything that could go wrong with our world, global warming is just a blip. Nevertheless, people are looking at GW in the same way as these other potential global catastrophies and it is frightening them. I believe this is unnecessary as there is little or nothing the average person can do about it and no amount of angst is going to change that. I believe that, in time, people will learn to live with the concept and stop worrying about it in much the same way the you will eventually stop fretting about the possibility that you may be living atop a supervolcanoe. There is nothing you can do about either one, so enjoy your life while you can.


 
I am sorry, but I have to disagree with you as well.  We DID start it, and if a portion of "the average people" help out then we can at least prolong the inevitable.  There is a lot that we can give up to assist in the bettering of this world.


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## Pedro y La Torre

TRG said:


> It's true that if one stops to consider what can happen to the earth when viewed from a geologic time perspective it can be very frightening. However, in the context of everything that could go wrong with our world, global warming is just a blip. Nevertheless, people are looking at GW in the same way as these other potential global catastrophies and it is frightening them. I believe this is unnecessary as there is little or nothing the average person can do about it and no amount of angst is going to change that. I believe that, in time, people will learn to live with the concept and stop worrying about it in much the same way the you will eventually stop fretting about the possibility that you may be living atop a supervolcanoe. There is nothing you can do about either one, so enjoy your life while you can.



Climate change is a human created problem and so can only be solved by human hands. I just read today in a national newspaper that because of climate change, the ice caps are melting earlier leaving polar bears 2 weeks less time to hunt and build up the neccessary fats to hibernate for 8 months. If this continues we could soon see their extinction.

You don't see ducks or bears polluting and destroying their habitat, that's a a human characteristic, thus, it's high time we started doing something to stop it. If not, well we're in for a bad future.


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## aleCcowaN

TRG said:


> ... However, in the context of everything that could go wrong with our world, global warming is just a blip. Nevertheless, people are looking at GW in the same way as these other potential global catastrophies and it is frightening them. I believe this is unnecessary as there is little or nothing the average person can do about it and no amount of angst is going to change that. ...





> *blip*
> ...
> *4* *:* a transient sharp movement up or down (as of a quantity  commonly shown on a graph)
> *5* *:* something relatively small or  inconsequential within a larger context <made only a _blip_ on the  political scene>


Did it mean that having worse menaces GW is not bad? or being the environment the result of a stochastic process we have to abandon researching and acting over the cause-effect parts of it -especially those mankind is the main actor-?

I agree with PianoMan. This is a battle we have to fight no matter a favorable outcome is guaranteed and before any cause is 100% proven. After all, are we part of Gea or its enemy? No parasite or virus that kills quickly its host survives long. Why have we to behave like that?


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## TRG

Where to begin? How about with the fact that since 1960 the CO2 in earth's atmosphere has been increasing in a fairly linear fashion at the rate of 1.5 ppm per year. No one disputes that this is due to human activity and almost no one disputes that it should cause the earth to warm up over time. If we could somehow change the world so the the collective output of anthropogenic CO2 was at the same level as 1960, atmospheric CO2 would still increase, but at a slower rate. What would this require? In the case of petroleum, production would have to be reduced from the current level of 70 million barrels per day to 20 million bpd (what it was in 1960). There would have to be similar reductions in the amount of coal and natural gas we consume. So if we can cut our use of fossil fuels to less than 30% of what the now use we can slow the rate of global warming, but not eliminate it altogether. I would like to be able to tell you that we have the means available to do this, but we do not. People who believe that we can stop GW by modest changes in lifestyle or by government tinkering here and there with the economy are engaging in wishful thinking. I would say it is nearly delusional. But let us suppose that the world could muster it's collective will and world wide limits are imposed on the production and consumption of fossil fuels to the levels of 1960's. The result would be a global economic catastrophy resulting in wars, famine, and the deaths of billions of people. Needless to say, there are very few countries waiting to sign up for this program. As for me, I'd sooner take my chances with GW. Sorry to be so pessimistic, but that is just the way it is.


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## Poetic Device

aleCcowaN said:


> Did it mean that having worse menaces GW is not bad? or being the environment the result of a stochastic process we have to abandon researching and acting over the cause-effect parts of it -especially those mankind is the main actor-?
> 
> I agree with PianoMan. This is a battle we have to fight no matter a favorable outcome is guaranteed and before any cause is 100% proven. After all, are we part of Gea or its enemy? No parasite or virus that kills quickly its host survives long. Why have we to behave like that?


 
I agree with you, but I think to let it really hit home we have to consider the following:  if we are to continue on the path that we are now, what will become of the planet that our children and grandchildren will inhabit?  I find/feel that with a plethora of people, they don't really care because they do not believe that the consequences will happen in their lifetime, however they fail to think of their future blood line.


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## aleCcowaN

I'd like to apologize for a mistake in units. In post #9 I wrote 1.4 millions usd per kw instead of Gw, what is correct.

I'd also like to make some remarks about TRG comments in the previous post in this thread. The "fairly linear fashion" increasing of CO2 content of the atmosphere is exactly as said, fairly linear. The question is, why is it fairly linear if human consumption of fossile fuels increased about 4% per year in an exponential way? Why is it fairly linear if oil consumption increased form 20 to 70 million barrels a day? We have a hint for an answer in the famous CO2 content graph of Mauna Loa Observatory. We see the fairly linear trend but we also see a saw-like curve on a yearly basis. That is because of the seasons and the delay in have CO2 evenly distribuited around the planet.

Surprisingly, facts like this are used by global warming detractors to say humans have little influence over the effect. The fact is that there are lots of carbon "transactions" in nature and last year the Earth released about 312 Gigatons of CO2 in the air, mankind added about 8 Gigatons from fossile fuels, deforestation and soil deterioration. But the planet absorbed 319 Gigatons of CO2, then the atmosphere gaining a little over 1 Gigaton.

There are well documented official sites with the carbon balance and its discussions, but summarizing, the seas are absorbing about 85% of CO2 that our behavior is producing. The mechanisms that governs this are not enough studied yet, but there's the fact that about half emissions from deforestation are absorbed by the remaining forests as CO2 acts as "fertilizer" an global warming itself and its increasing average rainfalls promotes tree growing. Similar systems works in the seas, and the higher partial pressure of CO2 in the air not even propagated completely to deep waters.

This planet-scale general balance of CO2, monthly improved and further developed, may give us in the future the full measure of what we should reduce to reach some equilibrium in a few decades -maybe with 440/70 ppm of CO2 and accepting about 0.5° of temperature aditional raises-. Meanwhile, reduce what we can, and prepare to cope with consequences that have a 20, 30 or even 100 years delay, as changes in Earth's albedo as the polar icecaps will continue to melt and take long time in recovering.

The atmosphere is gathering about 1.3 to 1.6 Gigatons of aditional CO2 each year. That is "just" about what deforestation and concrete and mortar  industry add. The planet is on our side and will leverage any effort we should be able to do.


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## Mate

_"...And did they get you trade your heroes for ghosts? _
_Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? _
_Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange _
_a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?..."_ 

This is an excerpt from Wish You Were Here . 

I believe that this particular portion of one of the most otstanding songs by Pink Floyd belongs in here, right now, at this point of the thread.

Mate


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## don maico

I am set visit Buenos Aires in february. I deduce from the above posts that I can expect high heat, which in itself is tolerable . Humidity in conjunction with high heat isnt I have , therefore, some apprehensions.Oops ,chat!
I thought all the soya grown down there( genetically modified) was being sold as cattle fodder to Europe??I read somewhere that as a result oif crossfertilisation hundreds of litres of the most noxious weedkillers were being used to detroy what are euphemistically known as "superweeds"i had no idea soya was being grown to produce fuel. Given the problems in the Middle East its no surprise that alternatives to "gasoline" are being looked at.


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## Mate

don maico said:


> I am set visit Buenos Aires in february. I deduce from the above posts that I can expect high heat, which in itself is tolerable . Humidity in conjunction with high heat isnt I have , therefore, some apprehensions.Oops ,chat!
> 
> 
> 
> Dear don, let's avoid chat. Click here.
> 
> 
> 
> I thought all the soya grown down there( genetically modified) was being sold as cattle fodder to Europe??I read somewhere that as a result oif crossfertilisation hundreds of litres of the most noxious weedkillers were being used to detroy what are euphemistically known as "superweeds"i had no idea soya was being grown to produce fuel. Given the problems in the Middle East its no surprise that alternatives to "gasoline" are being looked at.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Genetically modified soya grown here (as it all is) is mainly sold as fodder to China among other countries. And yes, big-petro-chemical industrial agriculture is here to stay.
> 
> Not only soybean but also maize are grown in large amounts to produce some 10% of the diesel-oil that the industrial agriculture complex needs to fulfill part of its ever increasing needs.
> 
> Saludos - Mate
Click to expand...


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## aleCcowaN

don maico said:


> I am set visit Buenos Aires in february. I deduce from the above posts that I can expect high heat, which in itself is tolerable . Humidity in conjunction with high heat isnt I have , therefore, some apprehensions.Oops ,chat!


Now (11pm 29Dec06) T29.8°C, Hum. 61% , feels like 32.7°C, a very hot night, but we have nights even worse, an increasing number of them each year





don maico said:


> I thought all the soya grown down there( genetically modified) was being sold as cattle fodder to Europe??I read somewhere that as a result oif crossfertilisation hundreds of litres of the most noxious weedkillers were being used to detroy what are euphemistically known as "superweeds"i had no idea soya was being grown to produce fuel. Given the problems in the Middle East its no surprise that alternatives to "gasoline" are being looked at.


About carbon balance each author has his/her numbers (I can't find the survey from which I recall the numbers by heart). This is a graphic in a paper submited to the XII World Forestry Congress and published in FAO web site -not endorsed by FAO, just published-.

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/ARTICLE/WFC/XII/MS14-E-2.gif

You can see in it that cement and land use change (deforestation, soil deterioration, etc.) are major sources along with fossile fuels; and land uptakes and oceans are major absorbers and mitigating actors.

Yes, we have an incresing production of bio-diesel mainly from soy oil estherification, and a little production of sugar cane ethanol, plus planned ethanol plants feed by corn. I insist this is good bussiness but not environmental friendly because, as I said in post #1, new crop lands lead to accelerated soil deterioration, and the balance is more carbon dioxide released than prevented from fossile fuels in Europe -at least the first 10 to 30 years-.

One hectare of soy produces 3 to 4 tons of soybeans containing about 1.2 tons of soy oil -what is left is cattle fodder-. This oil estherificated equals 1.5 tons of gasoline. The soil deterioration equals the ammount of carbon dioxide saved from fossile fuels. The first time farming of bushlands adds a huge ammount of carbon dioxide even before one single molecule of carbon dioxide is saved. A similar outcome with maize.

However, we have some rich provinces, Salta for instance, than can produce huge ammounts of sugar cane (up to 170 tons yearly per hectare involving a soy-like quota of soil deterioration ). As each ton of sugar cane yields 60 to 72 liters of ethanol, a hectare of sugar cane can produce up to 11 tons of ethanol -about the same energy of 10 tons gasoline-. But this is not fostered today, maybe because ethanol gives bad odor when is burned instead of gasoline.

But you can replace up to 10% of gasoline with ethanol and use your car without any change or tuning. This is made by law in Brasil. Why then promoting ethanol from corn crops in USA, Canada and Argentina? Good bussiness? Farmer votes? Whatever except global warming.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6321351.stm


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## Poetic Device

Take a look at *THIS*.  Wouldn't now constitute then's result of their global warming?  If so, do we really have anything to fear?  How much?  Won't Mother Nature take care of body development and adaptation?


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## Dave44000

No evolution selects those that fit and throws away the rest. You cannot change after the fact, after the selection is made. All you do is go extinct. Yes, the Earth and life in some form will go on. But, that is life in the most abstract sense, not your life or my life. 

The typical business metaphor about being ready to change is really wrong. No, you have to have already changed. But then, they are talking about small changes. Global warming is not a small change.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

Poetic Device said:


> Take a look at *THIS*.  Wouldn't now constitute then's result of their global warming?  If so, do we really have anything to fear?  How much?  Won't Mother Nature take care of body development and adaptation?



Do we really have anything to fear!? If you're still asking this question I can only imagine (please correct me if I'm wrong) that you're one of these so-called "skeptics" on climate change. The results of the changes *WE* are causing will certainly be disastrous. We can already see it around us here in Europe, milder winters, flowers blooming in January etc. Closer to you, there was a mini winter heatwave in NYC only a few weeks ago was there not? Not to mention the potentially catastrophic plight of polar bears and melting ice caps

No, I'm sorry, human kind definitely does have something to fear unless we start to take counter measures against this. The best scientists in the world are telling us there is a serious issue to be tackled here:



			
				Dr Rajendra Pachauri said:
			
		

> *The options for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions appear in a different light, because you can see what the costs of inaction are*



_
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change PROJECTIONS_ 

Probable temperature rise between 1.8C and 4C
   Possible temperature rise between 1.1C and 6.4C
   Sea level most likely to rise by 28-43cm
   Arctic  summer sea ice disappears in second half of century
   Increase in heatwaves very likely 
   Increase in tropical storm intensity likely

Alas, like most things and despite the warnings, we probably won't act until it's already too late.


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## Dave44000

The temperature and sea level changes don't translate into problems. But, how about this, an increase in CO2 will diminish our ability to grow food! Food prices will increase. Farm land will turn to dust. Wars will be fought for farmable land.


----------



## CrazyArcher

Dave44000 said:


> The temperature and sea level changes don't translate into problems.



Oh they do. With the ocean level rising, millions of people will be forced to live their homes because of the ocean flooding the land. Netherlands are among the best examples.


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## Mate

Dave44000 said:


> The temperature and sea level changes don't translate into problems.
> 
> 
> 
> I think I do not understand. Perhaps it's because of my poor English.
> But just in case I've got it right, you've got it all wrong.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But, how about this, an increase in CO2 will diminish our ability to grow food! Food prices will increase. Farm land will turn to dust. Wars will be fought for farmable land
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> In fact a rise in CO2 atmospheric level has an immediate dramatic incremental effect on plant growth.
> And yes, farmland will turn to dust but not becase CO2 increase; it will become useless because of global warming. Perhaps you just skipped a step.
Click to expand...

Mateamargo


----------



## aleCcowaN

Pedro y La Torre said:


> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6321351.stm



The title and info in this article are really misleading. There's no doubt mankind is far the major contributor to actual global warming. What is discussed is whether this period of warming is solely caused by mankind. The answer is "very likely". The whole thing is even more serious than it looks.



Poetic Device said:


> Take a look at *THIS*.  Wouldn't now constitute then's result of their global warming?  If so, do we really have anything to fear?  How much?  Won't Mother Nature take care of body development and adaptation?



The link provides the kind of argument pseudo-skeptiks like, in spite of the likely seriousness of the author, who is not talking about global warming, but, at most, tangentially, about the globe warmed in the past. The matter about global warming is not about Earth would survive to it, as greater catastrophes have happened in the past, and she did. Even a supernova can explode near us, and the Earth will continue to wander through the space as a dry king size pebble, and life would likely rebirth from bacteria inside the crust. The question is, are we able to survive? I'm sure we are, but this begs the question, are we entitled to sacrifize thousands of species and eco-systems only to sustain hedonistical pleasures, not our survival.

Summarizing: are we entitled to pose in risk ourselves to sustain hedonistic behaviors? are we entitled to damage planet's life in order to avoid risks to ourselves as we do it to sustain hedonistic behaviors?



Dave44000 said:


> The temperature and sea level changes don't translate into problems. But, how about this, an increase in CO2 will diminish our ability to grow food! Food prices will increase. Farm land will turn to dust. Wars will be fought for farmable land.



In fact sea level changes are really worrying. A 1 meter raise will cause whole countries to desappear (Maldives, Vanuatu), half Nile delta (20% of Egipt farm lands, including Second Nile Valley projects) to be swallowed by the Mediterranean, and so on, all this unless large construction projects started.

Besides, CO2 is a "fertilizer" that promotes plant growing, a compensating system to sequestrate carbon which we are not taking advantage of.

...

Finally, those of you who are willing to get informed first hand can read the WMO-UNEP-IPCC executive summary here. Due the nature of the institutions involved and the necesary round of comments of national governments, all the information is a little obscure, and as a result, we have witnessed the poor press comments on February 2nd and 3rd.

But the issue is simple, as my question here some months ago: What are you and your country doing to prevent global warming? Yesterday I was almost reviewing my desicion of keeping my air conditioners stuffed in the basement as temperature raised to 30° inside my apartment. Today is a bit cooler, so to speak, and I survived through mechanisms provided to me by Nature. That's some of the things I'm doing. Some people regard this as candid naivety, others like something worse. Surely people only interested in their 37 degrees.


----------



## TRG

aleCcowaN said:


> The title and info in this article are really misleading. There's no doubt mankind is far the major contributor to actual global warming. What is discussed is whether this period of warming is solely caused by mankind. The answer is "very likely". The whole thing is even more serious than it looks.
> 
> 
> 
> The link provides the kind of argument pseudo-skeptiks like, in spite of the likely seriousness of the author, who is not talking about global warming, but, at most, tangentially, about the globe warmed in the past. The matter about global warming is not about Earth would survive to it, as greater catastrophes have happened in the past, and she did. Even a supernova can explode near us, and the Earth will continue to wander through the space as a dry king size pebble, and life would likely rebirth from bacteria inside the crust. The question is, are we able to survive? I'm sure we are, but this begs the question, are we entitled to sacrifize thousands of species and eco-systems only to sustain hedonistical pleasures, not our survival.
> 
> Summarizing: are we entitled to pose in risk ourselves to sustain hedonistic behaviors? are we entitled to damage planet's life in order to avoid risks to ourselves as we do it to sustain hedonistic behaviors?
> 
> 
> 
> In fact sea level changes are really worrying. A 1 meter raise will cause whole countries to desappear (Maldives, Vanuatu), half Nile delta (20% of Egipt farm lands, including Second Nile Valley projects) to be swallowed by the Mediterranean, and so on, all this unless large construction projects started.
> 
> Besides, CO2 is a "fertilizer" that promotes plant growing, a compensating system to sequestrate carbon which we are not taking advantage of.
> 
> ...
> 
> Finally, those of you who are willing to get informed first hand can read the WMO-UNEP-IPCC executive summary here. Due the nature of the institutions involved and the necesary round of comments of national governments, all the information is a little obscure, and as a result, we have witnessed the poor press comments on February 2nd and 3rd.
> 
> But the issue is simple, as my question here some months ago: What are you and your country doing to prevent global warming? Yesterday I was almost reviewing my desicion of keeping my air conditioners stuffed in the basement as temperature raised to 30° inside my apartment. Today is a bit cooler, so to speak, and I survived through mechanisms provided to me by Nature. That's some of the things I'm doing. Some people regard this as candid naivety, others like something worse. Surely people only interested in their 37 degrees.


 
I think what you mean to say is, "I have no doubt". There are clearly doubters and some of them are serious people. Part of the argument I detect in the GHG/GW advocacy community is a desire to stifle debate and dissent. That cannot be a good thing. Even if everyone accepts GW, we still have a major debate about what is appropriate public policy. It is difficult for me to take some people seriously on GW when their public policy positions are so completely unserious. Part of the reason they are unserious is they all subscribe to the notion that fixing GW just requires so minor tinkering with the economy and a few technological breakthroughs. The best example of public policy failure is Kyoto. Implementation of the Kyoto protocols would have no discernable effect on GW, yet people are still talking about it as if it were important. Al Gore doesn't believe that nuclear power has a role to play in fighting GW. He may be right about GW, but his failure to comprehend what we can do to fight it leads me to believe he cannot be taken seriously. What it is probably going to take to slow down GW and GHG emissions is something very draconian like depopulating the planet, but that's not in the debate and if it were, it's advocates would be laughed out of the room. We need other answers even if all the GW skeptics can be shut up.


----------



## aleCcowaN

TRG said:


> I think what you mean to say is, "I have no doubt". There are clearly doubters and some of them are serious people. Part of the argument I detect in the GHG/GW advocacy community is a desire to stifle debate and dissent. That cannot be a good thing. Even if everyone accepts GW, we still have a major debate about what is appropriate public policy. It is difficult for me to take some people seriously on GW when their public policy positions are so completely unserious. Part of the reason they are unserious is they all subscribe to the notion that fixing GW just requires so minor tinkering with the economy and a few technological breakthroughs. The best example of public policy failure is Kyoto. Implementation of the Kyoto protocols would have no discernable effect on GW, yet people are still talking about it as if it were important. Al Gore doesn't believe that nuclear power has a role to play in fighting GW. He may be right about GW, but his failure to comprehend what we can do to fight it leads me to believe he cannot be taken seriously. What it is probably going to take to slow down GW and GHG emissions is something very draconian like depopulating the planet, but that's not in the debate and if it were, it's advocates would be laughed out of the room. We need other answers even if all the GW skeptics can be shut up.


 If you read again carefully the quote, the link inside, the executive summary, and then my remarks, you will see I meant the conclusion was "there's no doubt mankind is the major contributor to actual global warming": the likelihoods discussed are about mankind been the solely cause of actual global warming, that is, the Earth's temperatures would had keept balance or entered a cooler period, but human activities started this period of warming -the panel concluded this is more than 90% probable. 

It's not me. I don't need having or not having doubts, as I accepted I had to do something without waiting for complete evidence it is so. I'm not a believer, even I like my poluted city, concrete jungle, I hate bugs, and all Animal Planet like channels are erased from my remote control memory. I don't need to twist information. To do it, it's plenty of press news, polititians, starlets, and zillions of Joe Six-packs and Jane Q. Public that culture illiteracy, innumeracy and mind laziness, while they burn increasing ammounts of oil to foster their physical laziness as their asses grow fatter.

You repeatedly called to keep the quality of the debate, the multiplicity of point of view, showing respect to """the non believers""", but coming to the point to comment "solutions?" you stand firm about little can be done on this issue without leaving all human institutions and economy upside-down. You have a background in chemistry therefore you must have some training in scientific methods and hardly you can be an innumerate. Then show your numbers and your links about your little-can-be-done position, to enlight the debate. Everybody should do so. Nobody have to fear to be wrong. This is not the run for Congress, but a space where fellows practice their language skills and share their point of view. There's a lot of room for vanity and dialectics in many threads of this forum, but this is one of a few that accept quantities and long chains of reasoning.

My only new conclusion about this thread and its preceding is that GW debate is heavily nation/culture biased, with a high correlation between people coming from countries that polute a lot and spend peanuts (in comparisson with their national budget) in relief, and the it-is-not-proven-yet, nothing-can-be-done and similar positions. This include some inertia-breakers that seem to be "truly believers" in a not useful-proved way within the national group. This shows the state of debate of one country, not the state of the debate in the World.

One of the press releases last days said USA is the responsible of 39% of GHG yearly emissions (wrong: it is estimated to be 23 to 30%), folowed by 5% of Japan, 4% both China and Germany, etc. [It's curious but Europe have made an art of showing itself as a solid will for good things, and like a bunch of I-didn't-do-it tiny countries as convenience demands]. The end of my conclusion is that it is natural a vast majority of people in the United States chose to "believe" the [there-is-not-a-problem/nothing-can-be-done/it-is-not-proven-yet (delete as applicable)] approach. If they don't "believe" this (how easy and nice is "believing"!), they have to conclude:

1) The problem exists and something -not cheapy- can be done
2) We are the major contributor to the causes of that problem
3) Then we are the major contributor to the problem
4) Then we have to do something
5) Then being the solutions expensive
6) We have to spend a lot to solve the problem, much much more than copper coins in Mac Donald's crystal piggy banks.

As I cannot ship out the consequencies of GHG you throw second by second, I have to try to shape up you. It's that simple. Nor me or my country have a nuclear missile armed in few minutes, readyly pointing to a US city (guess who can have one of those to mine).

US and its citizens are not the navel of the World, and Al Gore is just a local clown or local genius of your _insula_. But US can be the navel of the GW, so think and endure.


----------



## Poetic Device

aleCcowaN said:


> But US can be the navel of the GW, so think and endure.


 

What is *that *supposed to mean?  PLease clarify so that I am not misunderstanding you... )-<


----------



## aleCcowaN

Poetic Device said:


> What is *that *supposed to mean?  PLease clarify so that I am not misunderstanding you... )-<


I used "navel" as the central point, as the key point, as the center of gravity of GW -Supose in a mental experiment that you would supress USA from 1901 to nowadays without affecting history and economy in the rest of the World, the level of GHG would recede to those of the '70, early or late, I cannot say-. Think (reflect) and endure (playing with its meanings: regard with acceptance or, at least, tolerance [what you are told] and remain firm, persist under the suffering, misfortune or comfortableless without yielding [what is needed to be done])

I regret I'm not able to comunicate with precision and fluently. I'm only an intermediate non-student of English and I ignore basic chapters of its grammar, use of prepositions, and I'm afraid of phrasal verbs. Besides, I tend to use to manny words of latin origin, as it's natural to me as a Spanish speaker. Besides, I have no English spelling checker integrated to my browser. But being this a language forum, I think English speakers take the use of English partly as courtesy or kindness, and manage to undestand what me and others like me are trying to say. A fact I really really appreciate.


----------



## Poetic Device

So, basically you are saying that the United States are the centre point of the cause of global warming?  Am I understanding that correctly, or is motherhood taking its toll on me?


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

Poetic Device said:


> So, basically you are saying that the United States are the centre point of the cause of global warming?  Am I understanding that correctly, or is motherhood taking its toll on me?



The United States is the world's biggest economy and thus, it's biggest polluter. Without the U.S., efforts to curb climate change are unfortunately going nowhere.


----------



## aleCcowaN

Poetic Device said:


> So, basically you are saying that the United States are the centre point of the cause of global warming?  Am I understanding that correctly, or is motherhood taking its toll on me?


Having had the United States about 4.5% of World's population during the last 100 years and having thrown the United States about 25% of greenhouse gases as an average from coal, oil, natural gas, forests destroyed, cement and soil deterioration. Having the United States done so constant and consistently throughout the century. Having the United States got involved in economical activities abroad that foster greenhouse gases emissions worldwide (this is not to exclusively blame USA). Having Western and Central Europe, with more population, similar technology, richness and life quality accountable for less GHG emissions. Having much more polulated countries like China and India with eight times the population of the USA across the century but the smallest portion of its emissions. What can I conclude?

There's no greater contributor to this problem you can compare with USA, no matter what criteria you may choose. No solution works without USA, besides it would be extremely unjunst, as important costs come with the solution -not dyer but heavy ones-, and we all have to share the burden, a share in proportion to our contribution to the generation of the trouble. Taxes are the usual way to level the burden inside countries, but countries have to compromise with other countries, as they are not people. That's the bad side of USA not signing Kyioto Protocol: it is not how useful is that Protocol, it is USA attitude. To me it is a proof that USA "tiene cola de paja" (ask in the forums the meaning of this prhase)


----------



## TRG

One of the things I see happening in this debate is simply laying all the blame on the US and using the US as an excuse for the rest of the world to not do anything. I think it is safe to say that if other countries, but mainly the EU, were able to demonstrate meaningful reductions in GHG without destroying their economies then the US would most likely fall in line with what is being done elsewhere. By meaningful reductions, I am not speaking of Kyoto which would accomplish next to nothing. It's going to take much more than the Kyoto Protocols to keep GHG levels from continuing to rise. So even if the US is being obstinate, why should that be an excuse for other countries to not implement their own strategies? One answer might be that it would confer an economic advantage on the US. Perhaps, but President Chirac of France has alread suggested that the EU will impose import taxes on American goods if the US does not adopt measure to limit GHG emissions, so a strategy is at hand to deal with American intransigence. It is fair to argue that at some point the US must participate in the effort to solve the problem, but that should not be a reason at this point in time for other countries, particularly the EU, to not  implement their own strategy now.


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## Bonjules

TRG said:


> It is fair to argue that at some point the US must participate in the effort to solve the problem, but that should not be a reason at this point in time for other countries, particularly the EU, to not implement their own strategy now.


I agree, and this seems not to be happening. Just today the news that Brussels will -largely due to lobbying of the German car industry and governement- dilute and soften the emission standards for cars which were planned.
One big exercise of hypocrisy and double-talk.
If it is true however that cars constitute only 16% of Green House Gases (true?), we better start looking at the other 84%...


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## aleCcowaN

As numbers are absent, as always, I decided to dig some data from some official sites (they turned out a mined field):

in order,
1) country
2) carbon dioxide emissions, metric tons per capita, year 2003 [Source Unstat - United Nations]
3) gross domestic product per capita in purchasing power parity, year 2006 otherwise indicated [Source CIA -The World Factbook]
4) gross domestic product generated by metric ton of carbon dioxide emited, in purchasing power parity [Source: me - (3) divided by (2)]

USA - 19.82 - 43500 - 2195
Germany - 9.77 - 31400 - 3214
France - 6.24 - 30100 - 4824
United Kingdom - 9.44 - 31400 - 3326
Italy - 7.70 - 29700 - 3857
Spain - 7.35 - 27000 - 3673

So far, USA, with a 298.4 millions population (2006), was accountable for 5799 million tons of CO2 emissions (2003) [about 40% less than other official USA websites say- part of the mined field-, but still a 23% of World's totals] to produce 12.98 trillion purchasing power parity dollars, some 2195 of such comparable dollars per CO2 metric ton, and the five major economies in EC together (Germany-France-United Kingdom-Italy-Spain), with a 302.4 millions population (about the same as USA, living in a similar climate looking at it as a whole), were accountable for 2497 million tons of CO2 emissions [only a 43% of USA emissions] to produce 9.16 trillion purchasing power parity dollars, some 3667 of such comparable dollars per CO2 metric ton. The emissions of each inhabitant of these comparable European countries are just 42.5% of their counterparts in the USA, as the firsts produce 67% more value for each CO2 ton emited than the self-called American do.

C'mon! People of the United States are hectic oil burners. Europe is not out of the problem at all, but they do much more to avoid it or get a relief.

I have many more numbers, but now it's late at night.


----------



## karuna

Besides the numbers it would be interesting to know why the US has more emissions than others. Especially considering the information that cars contribute only 16%. Is the rest from coal that is burned to produce heat and electricity? And what are future estimates for CO2 emissions for the whole world with different possible scenarios and their analysis (one where the USA signs the Kyoto protocol and another when they don't sign, for example)? 

As it is now it looks that people are more concerned about the US politics than discussing the real solutions.


----------



## ryba

It seems to me that spreading environmental awareness in all the societies of the world (especially in so big a society as the American one) is the only way.

The problem is that we need to act quickly before it's too late (well, actually it IS too late, but later on it will be even more TOO LATE) and developing awareness is in general a long lasting effort with effects in the future. The conclusion is that the aware should do everything they can to make people consider the climate changes a problem.

I'm talking about the people as (at least in democratic countries) it is the society that decides who gets the parliamentary mandat and it is the society who brings pressure on governments.

What is sad is that questions of ecology are never a part of electoral campaigns here in Poland. The situation of our natural environment has gotten and is getting considerably better due to restructurisation of postcommunist industry, etc. that was not environmentally friendly at all and due to actions of many non-governmental organizations, many of whom are acting in cooperation with organizations from other european countries. We had some ecological traditions dating back before World War 2 (if we can talk about "ecology" in the beginnings of the 20 century, hehe) and now the situation is getting better, we can be proud of saving many species that are now extinct in other european countries, kids are being tought a lot of stuff in biology classes that aims in developing their environmental sensitivity and there are TV programs on these issues, there is even a campaign on public TV (short clips made with a sense of humor convincing people for examle not to leave light on in the kitchen when you're in your bedroom, hehe) but we - as a nation - are still far from what can be called "awareness".

Poland has the biggest geothermal potential in continental Europe - geothermal energy is 100% pure and inexhaustible and, although there is a progress in this matter, carbon is still our main source of energy.

The "big guns" of politics should be aware that what is (or not) being done will have repercussions on their country's economy quite soon (desertification, natural disasters, disappearance of turistically attractive places and so on...). I am just afraid that, let's say, Australia will change it's policy only when they start suffering "climatic immigration" from the submerged islands of Oceania..


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## aleCcowaN

karuna said:


> As it is now it looks that people are more concerned about the US politics than discussing the real solutions.


Are they opposite things? May any solution disregard US policies, then US politics? Can we do without them?

Invert my mental experiment (GHG levels back to the '70s without a United States), and suppose you supress the rest of the World and keep USA in the stage. The levels of GHG would recede to those of '50s. Sooner or later USA would have to do something about this, as it has the scale to generate the problem by itself.

I will never disregard US policies, politics, culture and citizens, saying "OK! let them do their life, it'll arrive a time when they will undestand". I haven't a "Boxer calling". I won't say "I will work harder".


----------



## karuna

aleCcowaN said:


> Invert my mental experiment (GHG levels back to the '70s without a United States), and suppose you supress the rest of the World and keep USA in the stage. The levels of GHG would recede to those of '50s. Sooner or later USA would have to do something about this, as it has the scale to generate the problem by itself.



There are two many unknown factors about what influences the global warming and what will be the results and what can be done and how that will be help. While it is clear that something needs to be done this is completely different from, let's say, nuclear disarmament where the consequences can be clearly visualized. 

Who says that the USA wouldn't want to do something about the global warming. But I personally have never understand how implementing Kyoto protocol will make substantial difference. I would be grateful if someone could really explain this to me. However, this shows that CO2 emissions per capita for the USA is not much higher than for Australia and Canada and it is much lower than for UAE. What are the primary causes for this? If the rest of the world, especially developing countries, eventually want and manages to increase their quality of life and the only currently known way is to use more fossil fuels, let's say on the level of Russia or Germany, then the problem will only escalate. What the USA does is irrelevent. 

Instead of playing political games with the Kyoto protocol, maybe we should do something more substantial. For example, pouring maximum funding to developing non-carbon energy production. If cleaner energy that is cheaper than burning fossil fuels is developed then CO2 emissions will decrease by themselves. It is a bigger gamble though, but the potential gains are much higher as well. 

So, instead of debating how to force the Kyoto protocol on the USA, I would suggest to draw another protocol which obliges countries to increase financing for cleaner energy research.


----------



## Poetic Device

TRG said:


> One of the things I see happening in this debate is simply laying all the blame on the US and using the US as an excuse for the rest of the world to not do anything. It is fair to argue that at some point the US must participate in the effort to solve the problem, but that should not be a reason at this point in time for other countries, particularly the EU, to not implement their own strategy now.


 
I agree. Not for nothing, but it seems that some of you have this dead set idea that Americans are basically a bunch of hogs.


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

Poetic Device said:


> Not for nothing, but it seems that some of you have this dead set idea that Americans are basically a bunch of hogs.



Well......................

No, I kid. But as the world's leader in just about everything these days, it seems to me that the U.S. should be a leader on this and not a follower. I understand you want to safeguard your economy but without a proper environment what economy will you have left?


----------



## Poetic Device

I understand your point, however, do we really need to play that game?  You can't do it for yourselves and say "to hell with what they're doing"?


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

Poetic Device said:


> I understand your point, however, do we really need to play that game?  You can't do it for yourselves and say "to hell with what they're doing"?



Don't get me wrong, Europe's response has also been pretty shameful up to now, no question. But, at least there is some sort of a willingness to get something done. I just don't see that with the current U.S. administration. However, and many people don't even know this, a lot of cities and states around America like Washington are ignoring the government's inaction and are actually curbing their emissions. That is to be applauded.


----------



## Bonjules

Pedro y La Torre said:


> Don't get me wrong, Europe's response has also been pretty shameful up to now, no question. But, at least there is some sort of a willingness to get something done. I just don't see ...


 
I don't know, Pedro, but yesterdays news from Brussels(relenting on stricter emission standards)
was very disheartening. One step forward, two steps back....
All the industrialized nations are setting a terrible example:
Think about China. More than a billion people tumbling
by leaps and bounds toward a consumer society and as it seems willing to accept far higher levels of pollution than ourselves. What if they want what we have?
How are we going to tell them 'you can't have it'?


----------



## aleCcowaN

Poetic Device said:


> In any event, I thought that you might find THIS interesting.


The url within the link you provided, is http://10.21.47.26:15871/cgi-bin/blockpage.cgi?ws-session=1685118490. There's no domain, its a server script and it seems to depend on a session id saved in one of your browser's cookies. This url doesn't resolve in whois system and it seems to be asigned to a location in Kansas, USA, next to Wichita. I can't see what is linked to this address

Could you provide a text and a title in order to google it?


----------



## Pedro y La Torre

Bonjules said:


> All the industrialized nations are setting a terrible example:
> Think about China. More than a billion people tumbling
> by leaps and bounds toward a consumer society and as it seems willing to accept far higher levels of pollution than ourselves. What if they want what we have?
> How are we going to tell them 'you can't have it'?



I hope we won't need tell them that. Surely a way can be found so that they can prosper without helping turn the world into an environmental quagmire. For instance, I saw on the news yesterday that China was planning to build a plethera of new coal burning plants in order to power their economic surge. It was projected China would be the biggest burner of the stuff within the next 10 years. Now, coal is perhaps the biggest polluter there is and does the most danger to the environment. Surely western governments can help the Chinese develop more environmentally viable fuels. If not, well I fear for humankind. Because you are indeed correct. We can not turn around to those about to get on the ladder and say, "Sorry boys it's over you'll have to stay as you are". They simply won't accept it.


----------



## aleCcowaN

karuna said:


> However, this shows that CO2 emissions per capita for the USA is not much higher than for Australia and Canada and it is much lower than for UAE. What are the primary causes for this? If the rest of the world, especially developing countries, eventually want and manages to increase their quality of life and the only currently known way is to use more fossil fuels, let's say on the level of Russia or Germany, then the problem will only escalate.


These pages in Wikipedia are a part of the field of mines. There are many poluting countries. Yo saw in the list a lot of oil producers, with cheap energy, some of then burning natural gas they can't or don't like to sell. Other countries have a mentality similar to USA (Canada and Australia). Other countries are heavily dependent on coal, as they have no petroleum or natural gas (Poland, Czech Republic), have not enough (China) or depend on oil exports to balance their economy (Russia). The high prices of oil fostered the use of coal, a mayor CO2 generator, as 1 metric ton of antracite produces 3.6 ton of CO2, as natural gas produces 2 tons while it generates 90% more energy by ton.


karuna said:


> What the USA does is irrelevent.


I'll coment the country trends in a later post, as I promised, but I don't adhere the reasoning that says "as many mates are trying to move into the condo, there's no need to worry about the pent-house owner not paying the condo expenses".



karuna said:


> Instead of playing political games with the Kyoto protocol, maybe we should do something more substantial. For example, pouring maximum funding to developing non-carbon energy production. If cleaner energy that is cheaper than burning fossil fuels is developed then CO2 emissions will decrease by themselves. It is a bigger gamble though, but the potential gains are much higher as well.
> 
> So, instead of debating how to force the Kyoto protocol on the USA, I would suggest to draw another protocol which obliges countries to increase financing for cleaner energy research.


I couldn't agree more with this. You have lots of projects like this, for example Gran Inga dam on River Congo, cheaper than Three Gorges and Itaipú together but still with less environmental impact than any of both, producing twice the energy of both centrals combined, some 280 million GW-h per year, about 10% of US electricity, a 100% of what Spain consumes. That energy could foster clean development in all Congo Basin and Southern Africa, including South Africa, an important poluter which depends on coal and oil imports. The cost of this dam and central is about the money IMF has now unused. But politics interferes in this, from G-7 managing IMF as they please, to polical turmoils and mutual mistrust in the African regions to be benefited.

But don't think there are lots of ways to get cleaner and cheaper energy. We  have to accept some degree of local polution and  "garbage" management, like nuclear centrals, or some more expenses, from 0 to 100% more, to avoid CO2 generation. Or some expensive investments, like taking the 2.500 "chimneys" (mainly electricity centrals, cement factories and steel industries) that produce about 40% of antropogenic CO2 and pump the exhaustion gases through pipes and gather them in the very natural gas and oil fields that are being emptied out. This is not cheap at all, but it would do.



Bonjules said:


> I don't know, Pedro, but yesterdays news from Brussels(relenting on stricter emission standards)
> was very disheartening. One step forward, two steps back....
> All the industrialized nations are setting a terrible example:
> Think about China. More than a billion people tumbling
> by leaps and bounds toward a consumer society and as it seems willing to accept far higher levels of pollution than ourselves. What if they want what we have?
> How are we going to tell them 'you can't have it'?


Just a little bit of facts. China CO2 emissions were more than 4 billion tons in 2003 an raising about 13% a year. Probably, China will surpass USA as the main CO2 producer some time between 2008 and 2015. But still they thow about 3 tons of CO2 a year per capita, and their capacity to produce value is similar to their US counterparts, using purchasing power parity.

I'm living in a country which produces 3 tons of CO2 a year per capita, and generates 5000 purchasing power parity dollars for each ton it throws. We are OK with this figures. But Argentina is responsible for CO2 added coming from soil deterioration, and the productión of biofuels -like President Bush and his maize/ethanol initiative- will make this worse, as I said when started this thread (post #1). Be aware of these "solutions": ethanol is a good choice when it comes from sugar cane in countries that have yet deteriorated their soils, like Cuba and Brazil. 

[This subject is endless...like GW is...]


----------



## karuna

> The high prices of oil fostered the use of coal, a mayor CO2 generator, as 1 metric ton of antracite produces 3.6 ton of CO2, as natural gas produces 2 tons while it generates 90% more energy by ton.


My rough calculation show that if natural gas is CH4 (other hydrocarbons has higher carbon content) then it should be 2.8 tons CO2, not 2 tons. 

As for China, it is hard to imagine how the things can remain static. Their purchasing parity value may be higher today due to local production and agrarian system but as they become more globalised the price disparity with the rest of the world will decrease. Meaning that one ton of CO2 emissions will provide roughly the same value as in Europe.

And what about long-term future? What if the current levels of CO2 emissions remain for a century, two or three hundred years? If we concede that there is no real alternatives to fossil fuels, then it will stop only when all oil, gas and coal is burned. It doesn't mean much if it happens 10 years sooner or later on the planetary scale. 

I think that nuclear energy is the only real solution. It is not clear if the ITER project will provide the desired outcome but if it does and increased funding would make it possible to switch to non-fossil energy production at least 10 years sooner, then CO2 emission savings would be considerable. It is worth the gamble.


----------



## Athaulf

karuna said:


> I think that nuclear energy is the only real solution. It is not clear if the ITER project will provide the desired outcome but if it does and increased funding would make it possible to switch to non-fossil energy production at least 10 years sooner, then CO2 emission savings would be considerable. It is worth the gamble.



Well said.  However, a great problem is that the same people who profess the greatest concern about global warming are usually also the fiercest opponents of nuclear energy.  In fact, many environmentalist groups (e.g. Greenpeace) are staunchly opposed even to the research into nuclear fusion.


----------



## aleCcowaN

karuna said:


> My rough calculation show that if natural gas is CH4 (other hydrocarbons has higher carbon content) then it should be 2.8 tons CO2, not 2 tons.


Natural gas varies in composition, it is about 70-80% methane, but 15% hydrogen, small parts of other hydrocarbons -they are separated to be sold appart-, some CO2 and inert gases. I made a rough calculation, it should have been 2.2 or 2.3 tons.


karuna said:


> As for China, it is hard to imagine how the things can remain static. Their purchasing parity value may be higher today due to local production and agrarian system but as they become more globalised the price disparity with the rest of the world will decrease. Meaning that one ton of CO2 emissions will provide roughly the same value as in Europe.


The purpose of purchasing parity value is avoid that consequence as much as possible. We can compare different countries, and answer the question of why if my country has a GDP per capita of 5500 usd (4200 euros) we don't feel such a poor people, as I pay the underground 0.24 usd, and 3usd a pound of veal loin, 0.35usd a pound of bread, and so on. But underground trains, refrigerators and wheat crops, mill and bakery industry consume a similar ammount of energy than in Switzerland. It's not perfect, but it is a good first approach to the matter of GW vs. size of the country economy.


karuna said:


> And what about long-term future? What if the current levels of CO2 emissions remain for a century, two or three hundred years? If we concede that there is no real alternatives to fossil fuels, then it will stop only when all oil, gas and coal is burned. It doesn't mean much if it happens 10 years sooner or later on the planetary scale.
> 
> I think that nuclear energy is the only real solution. It is not clear if the ITER project will provide the desired outcome but if it does and increased funding would make it possible to switch to non-fossil energy production at least 10 years sooner, then CO2 emission savings would be considerable. It is worth the gamble.


I agree, nuclear power is one of the reliefs, although it has its own risks and environmental chalenges we need to cope with. My country is constantly suspected the last 40 years because we have developed our own nuclear centrals. We intended to have 6 or 7 nuclear plants by these years, but international pressure (a couple of contries in fact) stopped the programm during 25 years. We are starting our third plant now, using a technology that doesn't let us to have plutonium to build hundreds of nuclear weapons, so easing the lions, so to speak. Nuclear power is now about 6% of our electrical matrix, but it should be about 15% by now, and we are suffering a lack of electricity and burning increasing ammounts of natural gas and oil. It's owed a great deal(joke) to our own neglect, but international preassures don't make it easier. I am very angry with our own politicians because we have a mature technology in wind power but recently the government assigned about 28 million dollars to build our first 20 high power windmills. I wish for international pressure on Argentina to develop our own wind power industry, much more efficient due to the blessing of mother Nature than what Denmark's, Germany's, Spain's and California's could ever dream.

About the other, there's some inertia, partly a real one, partly an inertia caused by interests, ignorance and resistance to changes.


----------



## TRG

aleCcowaN said:


> Natural gas varies in composition, it is about 70-80% methane, but 15% hydrogen, small parts of other hydrocarbons -they are separated to be sold appart-, some CO2 and inert gases. I made a rough calculation, it should have been 2.2 or 2.3 tons.
> The purpose of purchasing parity value is avoid that consequence as much as possible. We can compare different countries, and answer the question of why if my country has a GDP per capita of 5500 usd (4200 euros) we don't feel such a poor people, as I pay the underground 0.24 usd, and 3usd a pound of veal loin, 0.35usd a pound of bread, and so on. But underground trains, refrigerators and wheat crops, mill and bakery industry consume a similar ammount of energy than in Switzerland. It's not perfect, but it is a good first approach to the matter of GW vs. size of the country economy.
> I agree, nuclear power is one of the reliefs, although it has its own risks and environmental chalenges we need to cope with. My country is constantly suspected the last 40 years because we have developed our own nuclear centrals. We intended to have 6 or 7 nuclear plants by these years, but international pressure (a couple of contries in fact) stopped the programm during 25 years. We are starting our third plant now, using a technology that doesn't let us to have plutonium to build hundreds of nuclear weapons, so easing the lions, so to speak. Nuclear power is now about 6% of our electrical matrix, but it should be about 15% by now, and we are suffering a lack of electricity and burning increasing ammounts of natural gas and oil. It's owed a great deal(joke) to our own neglect, but international preassures don't make it easier. I am very angry with our own politicians because we have a mature technology in wind power but recently the government assigned about 28 million dollars to build our first 20 high power windmills. I wish for international pressure on Argentina to develop our own wind power industry, much more efficient due to the blessing of mother Nature than what Denmark's, Germany's, Spain's and California's could ever dream.
> 
> About the other, there's some inertia, partly a real one, partly an inertia caused by interests, ignorance and resistance to changes.


 
The composition of natural gas you have indicated is unlike any natural gas produced and marketed in the US. To see a typical NG composition look here. If it were 100% methane then the CO2/NG ratio would be the ratio of the molecular weights or 44/16, which is 2.75. When you consider the other hydrocarbons and inerts, the net effect is that the actual ratio is probably slightly lower than 2.75, but that's close enough. There is virtually no hydrogen in natural gas. If there were, it would be a problem. It escapes too easily and is more explosive.


----------



## Mate

aleCcowaN said:


> I am very angry with our own politicians because we have a mature technology in wind power but *it was not until* recently *that* the government assigned about 28 million dollars to build our first 20 high power windmills. I wish for international pressure on Argentina to develop our own wind power industry, much more efficient due to the blessing of mother Nature than what Denmark's, Germany's, Spain's and California's could ever dream.
> quote]
> 
> ¿Es esto lo que querías decir Alec?
> 
> Si ayudé, me alegro.
> Si me equivoqué, pido a todos perdón.
> 
> Mate


----------



## aleCcowaN

Mateamargo said:


> aleCcowaN said:
> 
> 
> 
> I am very angry with our own politicians because we have a mature technology in wind power but *it was not until* recently *that* the government assigned *only* about 28 million dollars to build our first 20 high power windmills. I wish for international pressure on Argentina to develop our own wind power industry, much more efficient due to the blessing of mother Nature than what Denmark's, Germany's, Spain's and California's could ever dream.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ¿Es esto lo que querías decir Alec?
> 
> Mate
Click to expand...

Pensé que la cifra resultaba suficientemente miserable y tardía para que se imaginaran lo que estaba diciendo (además se la van a "robar toda")


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## aleCcowaN

TRG said:


> The composition of natural gas you have indicated is unlike any natural gas produced and marketed in the US. To see a typical NG composition look here. If it were 100% methane then the CO2/NG ratio would be the ratio of the molecular weights or 44/16, which is 2.75. When you consider the other hydrocarbons and inerts, the net effect is that the actual ratio is probably slightly lower than 2.75, but that's close enough. There is virtually no hydrogen in natural gas. If there were, it would be a problem. It escapes too easily and is more explosive.


You are right. I was checking the books I used in high school, and digging in my memory, and I recalled the discovery of a gas field containing "gas muy seco" (very dry gas?) containing about 12% Hydrogen (in volume, not mass) and only traces of ethane, propane, etc. [Now I realize that the coexistance of high volumes of H2 with propane, buthane, etc. under high pressures and temperatures during ages sounds unlikely] Yes, the figure should be 2.65 or so here, once our natural gas passed the petrochemical center of Bahía Blanca which takes advantage of its heavy contents.

I will research later the ratio energy/CO2 generation for natural gas and antracite (field/mine level), what was the point. Argentina is now promoting the coal mining for political reasons, with state assistance and benefits, in the very place (Patagonia) where windmills capacity factors varies from 45% to 61% using windmills class II (range 40km/h to 80km/h), a figure that is to envy when you think in the European and Western USA values (27 to 41%) making windpower economicaly sustainable and very reliable.

There's an estimation that Argentina could produce up to 28% of its electrical power from wind without modifying its system and keeping a balanced supply, much more, up to 60%, including water pumping between reservoirs with hidroelectrical power plants, hydrogen production, and low pricing under oversupply periods. The wind power atlas of just one of our provinces (Chubut) estimates a total 240Gw using windmills, with low environmental impact (including visual, noise, and bird migration routes) that could generate about 1000 trilion Kw-h (about 26% of total USA electricity consumption - of course I know we can't sell it there) with wholesale prices about 48 usd/Mw-h, but this would need an investments of 400 billion dollars. That's why our 28 million assigned sounds mean to me.


----------



## TRG

aleCcowaN said:


> You are right. I was checking the books I used in high school, and digging in my memory, and I recalled the discovery of a gas field containing "gas muy seco" (very dry gas?) containing about 12% Hydrogen (in volume, not mass) and only traces of ethane, propane, etc. [Now I realize that the coexistance of high volumes of H2 with propane, buthane, etc. under high pressures and temperatures during ages sounds unlikely] Yes, the figure should be 2.65 or so here, once our natural gas passed the petrochemical center of Bahía Blanca which takes advantage of its heavy contents.
> 
> I will research later the ratio energy/CO2 generation for natural gas and antracite (field/mine level), what was the point. Argentina is now promoting the coal mining for political reasons, with state assistance and benefits, in the very place (Patagonia) where windmills capacity factors varies from 45% to 61% using windmills class II (range 40km/h to 80km/h), a figure that is to envy when you think in the European and Western USA values (27 to 41%) making windpower economicaly sustainable and very reliable.
> 
> There's an estimation that Argentina could produce up to 28% of its electrical power from wind without modifying its system and keeping a balanced supply, much more, up to 60%, including water pumping between reservoirs with hidroelectrical power plants, hydrogen production, and low pricing under oversupply periods. The wind power atlas of just one of our provinces (Chubut) estimates a total 240Gw using windmills, with low environmental impact (including visual, noise, and bird migration routes) that could generate about 1000 trilion Kw-h (about 26% of total USA electricity consumption - of course I know we can't sell it there) with wholesale prices about 48 usd/Mw-h, but this would need an investments of 400 billion dollars. That's why our 28 million assigned sounds mean to me.


 
Wind power is practical from the standpoint of the cost of the power that it generates. It is relatively cheap because the energy is free. The biggest problem with wind power is that it is not dependable, so for every megawatt of wind generation capacity you build, you also need to build another megawatt of some other type of power generation in order to supply the power when the wind is not blowing. This makes the capital cost of windpower higher than other types of power generation. It can however be used to reduce fossile fuel consumption on an incremental basis so it does have a place and should be used to the extent possible.


----------



## aleCcowaN

TRG said:


> Wind power is practical from the standpoint of the cost of the power that it generates. It is relatively cheap because the energy is free. The biggest problem with wind power is that it is not dependable, so for every megawatt of wind generation capacity you build, you also need to build another megawatt of some other type of power generation in order to supply the power when the wind is not blowing. This makes the capital cost of windpower higher than other types of power generation. It can however be used to reduce fossile fuel consumption on an incremental basis so it does have a place and should be used to the extent possible.


There are few countries that have a balanced "formula" of both conventional and new sources of energy.

Argentina has 6% of its electricity consumption generated by nuclear power, which is the less flexible source, as it requires almost constant power. About 40% is generated by hydroelectric power plants, very adapting on demand, provided long chains of dams. The rest comes almost all from natural gas.

We have high capacity factors in windpower, meaning the time the mill is full power working, or its equivalency when it works mid or low power. In Pico Truncado - Santa Cruz - Argentina, we have capacity factors of 62%, meaning about 40% of the time the mill is working at nominal power, about 20% of the time is working between 50 and 100%, and about 30% it's working between 10 and 50%. This makes windpower very dependable to us, as we have many hidroelectric big power plants, and many more to be build, some of them chained together, and the rivers here have seasonal patterns and the power plants are always overpowered by design to take advantage of the flows and provide large ammounts of electricity between 9AM and 8PM in working days, or during heath and cold waves. This hydroelectric power plants overcapacity -actual and planned- are sunk costs, and we can take advantage of it to built windpower up to 28% of the power matrix without overinvesting one single dollar in other plants to balance a expectable lack of wind in certain hours and days.

Dennmark has troubles to do it with windpower, as the country is a small one (meaning area, then, little variation of weather along the country), has capacity factors that exceed 32% only in the middle of North Sea (with the additional costs of building on trouble waters), but still manage to generate 42% of its electricity from wind (50-55% planned). They are leaders in the field of mid-power windmills and they are the creators of very interesting comercial electricity rates to move the demand to non traditional hours and days, as cheap energy from wind, sold to the industry on Sunday, and discounts going straight to the workers' pockets. They are an example to all of us.

Argentina has been blessed by Nature with a variety of resources that would let us to quickly (10 years) eliminate any electricity produced by fossile fuels (using hydrogen production to compesate fuel consumption in certain circumstances). But Nature is not all, as one bad administration follows another, and we have no love nor respect for technology and capital.

But other countries has been gifted like Argentina. Canada and Russia are very good examples, as they can take advantage of wind power (Newfoundland and Labrador are not different from Patagonia) combined with hydroelectricity, both are great consumers and exporters of energy, and provide and are near to the greatest energy sinks of Western Europe, USA, China and Japan. Besides, Canada and Russia have and advantage Argentina lacks: they have many time zones and can trade energy both North to South and East to West. Argentina only can do so with our neighbor Chile, as Brazil is another hungry energy consumer, and they help us as much as they are able.

Someone asked how came cars produce just 16% of CO2 (about 20% in USA). Electricity is the most important cause, cement and steel industry, household heating, oil distilation are no minor factors.

How mankind can deal with a 55% economical growth in the next ten years, and do it increasing energy consumption just 30%, while we do so without increasing more CO2 emissions and collaborate with the planet to create sinks for a part of that CO2 instead of create more unbalances. All this is the very challenge of the decade. It will be expensive, but we will spend about 15 trillion dollars in "defense" along this decade. Do you think that this challenge would cost 15 trillion dollars? Certainly much less (but not much much less)


----------



## Bonjules

karuna said:


> And what about long-term future? .......
> .........................
> 
> I think that nuclear energy is the only real solution. It is not clear if the ITER project will provide the desired outcome but if it does and increased funding would make it possible to switch to non-fossil energy production at least 10 years sooner, then CO2 emission savings would be considerable. It is worth the gamble.


Are you serious?
If fusion technology is as safe as they say and available.
I'd give it a try.
But fission? You are willing to 'gamble' with an inherently dangerous, unstable technology with a ton of
as yet unsolved problems of waste etc.( and no solution in sight)? I understand you were born not too far from a place where major chunks of real estate are already contaminated for many years.
Would you like to pick a little planet of your own? Go right ahead. On this one where I and those dear to me
(that includes large parts of mankind) have to live,
I'd prefer that you not 'gamble' with our lives and well-beeing. Thank you.


----------



## TRG

Bonjules said:


> Are you serious?
> If fusion technology is as safe as they say and available.
> I'd give it a try.
> But fission? You are willing to 'gamble' with an inherently dangerous, unstable technology with a ton of
> as yet unsolved problems of waste etc.( and no solution in sight)? I understand you were born not too far from a place where major chunks of real estate are already contaminated for many years.
> Would you like to pick a little planet of your own? Go right ahead. On this one where I and those dear to me
> (that includes large parts of mankind) have to live,
> I'd prefer that you not 'gamble' with our lives and well-beeing. Thank you.


 
Chernobyl was an inherently unsafe design which will not be used in the future. The rest of the nuclear power industry has an extremely good track record for safety. And in addition to Chernobyl we have all the atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons done in the 50's and 60's and we have Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All of these things together have not even remotely begun to rival the risks being put forth for GW. It's not like we have a lot of other choices if want want to quickly put a dent in the amount of CO2 we are emitting. Maybe later we'll come up with something even more safe, but at the moment nuclear power is one of the few really potent tools we have for reducing CO2 emissions. If you are really concerned about GW, then you should be in favor of nukes.


----------



## Kajjo

TRG said:


> If you are really concerned about GW, then you should be in favor of nukes.


Unfortunately, you are right here. Reducing carbon dioxide emission significantly in the next 10 years can only be done by nuclear power. Of course, mankind should focus on developing sustainable energy sources, but development needs it time and no other source is available in the amounts necessary. Building wind plants, water and solar power are fine and surely part of the future energy models, but they will just not be able to satisfy the current energy needs.

Kajjo


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## Bonjules

Kajjo said:


> Unfortunately, you are right here. Reducing carbon dioxide emission significantly in the next 10 years can only be done by nuclear power......................
> ........ not be able to satisfy the current energy needs.
> 
> Kajjo


 
Fiddlesticks. I am tired to hear this old sermon, of what my 'needs' are. I can easily do with a quarter or less of what I'm currently 'allocated'. I live in the Tropics and don't even have air conditioning. Sure, sometimes it would be nice. Who tells us what our 'needs' are?
Kajjo, you need to stop building those useless luxury tin and plastic boxes on wheels over there. Just that will reduce GHG's a multiple of the pollution they cause running. We need to build and plan so we don't 'need' them. We 'need' to drastically curtail our 'needs'.
We don't 'need' all those gasoline or electric lawn mowers. Push mowers work fine, the rest chickens or goats can eat.
 I am not inclined to gamble with an inherently unsafe
and dangerous technology for some false 'needs'.


----------



## TRG

Bonjules said:


> Fiddlesticks. I am tired to hear this old sermon, of what my 'needs' are. I can easily do with a quarter or less of what I'm currently 'allocated'. I live in the Tropics and don't even have air conditioning. Sure, sometimes it would be nice. Who tells us what our 'needs' are?
> Kajjo, you need to stop building those useless luxury tin and plastic boxes on wheels over there. Just that will reduce GHG's a multiple of the pollution they cause running. We need to build and plan so we don't 'need' them. We 'need' to drastically curtail our 'needs'.
> We don't 'need' all those gasoline or electric lawn mowers. Push mowers work fine, the rest chickens or goats can eat.
> I am not inclined to gamble with an inherently unsafe
> and dangerous technology for some false 'needs'.


 
The may seem like "false needs" to you, but to most of the world, they are necessary or desireable. You need to realize that very few people want to lead the type of lifestyle you are advocating to solve the problem. Even if you are right, if you can't convice people to follow your lead, then in the end you are just right and will have accomplished nothing. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. People want cars and they want TV's and they want air conditioning. You say, well, you don't need all that. Good luck with that argument.


----------



## Bonjules

TRG said:


> The may seem like "false needs" to you, but to most of the world, they are necessary or desireable. You need to realize that very few people want to lead the type of lifestyle you are advocating to solve the problem. Even if you are right, if you can't convice people to follow your lead, then in the end you are just right and will have accomplished nothing. We can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. People want cars and they want TV's and they want air conditioning. You say, well, you don't need all that. Good luck with that argument.


ar 

I merely stated what we need. If people prefer to slowly cook in their
fancy cars, so be it. Meanwhile, I'd prefer not to be cooked rapidly in
a nuclear accident, or be sickened by its contamination.


----------



## TRG

Bonjules said:


> ar
> 
> I merely stated what we need. If people prefer to slowly cook in their
> fancy cars, so be it. Meanwhile, I'd prefer not to be cooked rapidly in
> a nuclear accident, or be sickened by its contamination.


 
"We don't see things as they are but as we want them to be. "

Does this look familiar? It should, it's your signature line. You need to spend some time reflecting on what it means, or maybe get a different one.


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## aleCcowaN

We have to moderate our energy consumption in some way. I think that alike the prethora of cell phones, RMSs and e-mails don't make communication better than a mass stammer choir , a lot of energy consumption doesn't make things happen or produces any value. Many years ago I was heating rooms unused in my apartment with my central heater, today with some new room heaters with individual controls, regulating some grilles, lowering the thermostate some 3 degress, and programming temperatures as we use different rooms, I manage to reduce my natural gas bill for July-August from 1000 cubic meters to about 400 (GW aided a bit). I only bought a thin sweater, something I always refused to wear inside my house, and I don't feel any diference. We have to convince people that it's OK to spend 30$ in theatre tickets, though the play is bad and we leave in the middle of the performance, and it's really bad to spend 30$ in leaving lights on in empty rooms. I trust social evaluation will evolve to deal with CO2 promoters the same way we deal nowadays with smokers.

But there's not something like nukes vs air-conditioner-less. I'm surprised by the virulence against nukes, as car crashes killed 40* million people over a century and left impaired tens of millions more and nobody is for banning cars. Cars will kill about 1,150,000* people this year and we all are only calling for responsable driving, technical testing, good roads and signals, and alcohol lovers far from steering wheels. Nukes and nuclear waste are less dangerous to people than cars. Nuclear waste is as dangerous as all the radioactive minerals in mines are. Then, why being against nukes when technology is safer year by year, an not being against cars, predicted to be in 2020 the third cause of dead, folowing heart deseases and cancer?

*Maybe I stepped on a mine, but this figures are OK when you check regionals for Europe and America. I thought at first glance they were exagerated for Africa, China and India -the "hidden" or "misterious" regions where constant catastophies happen, while in our backyards things continue to follow their normal channel- My impression is that these figures should be 15 millions and 500,000, but I have no factual basis to contradict those published figures.


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## karuna

Chernobyl accident was basically caused by bad design plus negligence. One had to have had lived in the USSR to understand how hypocritical the soviet society was at that time that the first attempt to straighten it out disintegrated it completely. The lack of transparency and proper information also played its role. It also created a lot of rumors, overstated number of casualties and health consequences and instilled unrational scepticism and fear toward everything that contained the word "nuclear". 

When each year about 2000 people die from coal mining, it is all seen as "natural" and acceptable price to pay but Chernobyl nuclear accident was even smaller than that (although probably the loss of material property was bigger). But if we include the effects from the global warming, the nuclear energy inherently looks much safer.


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## Athaulf

Bonjules said:


> Fiddlesticks. I am tired to hear this old sermon, of what my 'needs' are. I can easily do with a quarter or less of what I'm currently 'allocated'. I live in the Tropics and don't even have air conditioning. Sure, sometimes it would be nice. Who tells us what our 'needs' are?



You might be surprised how little of your living standard would be left if the wealth you consume were actually reduced to a quarter of its present value.  Just imagine what vast resources have to be spent just to maintain the internet connection over which you're writing this (picture the entire process necessary to produce that connection from scratch, not just the present cost of maintaining it).

As for the sermons, you have it entirely backward.  Your current level of consumption is set only by your desire to do so.  Nobody is telling you what your needs are; you are deciding for yourself in that regard.  Those who preach that our consumption levels should be radically reduced are the ones giving the sermons about what our needs are, and their ideas are in radical conflict by what people themselves actually perceive to be their needs.


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## Kajjo

Bonjules said:


> I am tired to hear this old sermon, of what my 'needs' are.


I explicitly stated a time range of 10 years. No matter what you plan personally, you will not be able to reduce energy consumption of Western states to _a fourth_, as you claim, inside a few years. I do not favor nuclear technology, but it _would _be the only method to reduce carbon dioxide emission _significantly_ in due course.



> We need to build and plan so we don't 'need' them. We 'need' to drastically curtail our 'needs'.


Again, think about how to realise all that drastic changes in only some years time. It absolutely unrealistic, no matter how desirable it might be from your point of view. 

You have to find means that are (1) widely accepted, (2) available immediately, and actually will (3) significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

I have no other ideas on how to produce such an amount of energy than by nuclear plants at the time being.

If you solely want to promote alternative techniques, even if you would invest tremendous amounts of money and (fossile!) energy into solar, water and wind power plants, the total amount of alternative energy in ten years time would not be enough to replace a tenth of all consumed energy and the hardware would probably consume a huge a mount of fossile energy to be produced.

By the way, water power has very negative effects on the biosystems involved. It is not environmentally friendly, it is just carbon dioxed neutral.

Kajjo


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## Bonjules

TRG said:


> "We don't see things as they are but as we want them to be. "
> 
> Does this look familiar? It should, it's your signature line. You need to spend some time reflecting on what it means, or maybe get a different one.


 
Yes, TRG.
I know exactly what it means, and it applies to
everybody equally, you and me included. And it means that we might even get the 'nukes' you guys think are such a good idea.
No great help here!


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## Bonjules

Kajjo said:


> I explicitly stated a time range of 10 years. No matter what you plan personally, you will not be able to reduce energy consumption of Western states to _a fourth_, as you claim, inside a few years. I do not favor nuclear technology, but it _would _be the only method to reduce carbon dioxide emission _significantly_ in due course.
> 
> Again, think about how to realise all that drastic changes in only some years time. It absolutely unrealistic, no matter how desirable it might be from your point of view.
> 
> Kajjo


 
Forgive me if I don't quite follow here, Kajjo. You are saying, if I read you correctly, it is quicker to build new nuclear power plants than to decide to drastically reduce power consumption? Are you serious? 10 years?
Do you realize how long it takes to concieve, plan in detail and build those things, including overcoming the opposition some unrealistic dreamers like myself will probably voice ( - or even without those?).
These are long term projects, my friend, and their consequences might even last for thousands of years (those of the waste with absolute guarantee).
Meanwhile, I am waiting with baited breath if you will get anybody just to foot  the insurance costs - it would have to be privately financed, wouldn't it now, to prove that it can effectively compete economically....
Maybe I am not the only dreamer around here.


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## Kajjo

Bonjules said:


> You are saying it is quicker to build new nuclear power plants than to decide to drastically reduce power consumption? Are you serious? 10 years?


Yes, I am serious. Whatever projects attempt to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emission in ten years are very ambitious, very expensive and probably difficult to push through.

However, drastically reducing the _energy consumption _is entirely unrealistic. You cannot take away property, destroy tens of millions of jobs, strongly reduce travel and transportation opportunities without seriously risking civil wars and a very high degree of dissatisfaction of a majority of people.

On the contrary, you _could_ build enough nuclear power plants to drastically reduce necessary conversion of coal and gas to energy. Of course, this will not happen. I am not a dreamer. In Germany the ecological party is in favour of gas and coal rather than nuclear power. They are stucked in their own irrational argumentation and fears.

By the way, I never said that I believe that carbon dioxide emission is such an urgent problem. At the moment we discuss how the emission could be decreased in a relatively short period of time -- if desired so. 



> Meanwhile, I am waiting with baited breath if you will get anybody just to foot  the insurance costs - it would have to be privately financed, wouldn't it now, to prove that it can effectively compete economically...


That is nonsense. If the state wanted to support and urgently promote nuclear power, it would just allow such plants. Insurance issues have been created to make nuclear power disadvantageous. Further, modern nuclear technology is not particular dangerous, but certainly poses huge problems  in the long-term perspective of disposal.

Kajjo


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## Bonjules

Kajjo said:


> Yes, I am serious. .....
> 
> That is nonsense. If the state wanted to support and urgently promote nuclear power, it would just allow such plants.
> 
> Kajjo


Excuse me Kajjo, but the nonsense is yours. Allowing a plant is easy, you still have to decide who will PAY for the damage (Easily billions of dollars). In the US this is a notoriously contentious issue (or they would have built
a gazillion of them already). I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about. The issues are quite different over here from over there.


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## aleCcowaN

> "Based on data reported to the IAEA's Power Reactor Information System (PRIS),  altogether 438 nuclear plants with a combined capacity of 353,000 megawatts  produce electricity in 30 countries. Together they generated nearly 2544  terawatt-hours of electrical power in 2001, or about 4% more than in 2000.
> 
> 
> Production remains uneven, however, heavily concentrated in industrialized  countries, where four of every five operating nuclear plants are located.  Eighteen countries rely on nuclear power for one-fifth or more of their  electricity needs. Nuclear's share of total electricity production ranges from  about 20% in the Czech Republic and United States to nearly 78% in France and  Lithuania. Worldwide, nuclear's share stands at about 16% ot total electricity  production."
> 
> Source: The IAEA Reports on Nuclear Power Status & Trends


Nukes are mature technology and we can quicky build more electric power "relying" on them. But nukes have constant power, and supply the same power 5pm and 3am in winter, that's why we can "trust" them up to 25-30% of global supply. In the very long term nuclear waste would be a major problem. That's why we should develop alternate sources of energy and carbon sinks to the unavoidable fossile fuels burning.

No single thing will work alone. Windpower is not a panacea nor nukes are the devil in disguise. Some ideas:

Mechanical things like windmills and nukes have certain economies of scale and better technologies can cut costs, yet making safer the unsafe. But there are limits to it. But we forgot direct sun power. Solar cells manufacturers have being cutting their costs as semiconductors industry have something similar to the known law that let us double our computer's processing power per dollar each 18 months. But solar cells are still expensive and they don't attract much attention. However, a solar constant of 100watt/square meter is very atractive (you need just the land area of huge cities like Los Angeles or Buenos Aires, full sun, right angle, to equal the figure of nuclear power above -more realistic, five times, about 6000 square miles). But this cells are becoming cheaper and more reliable each year, but they are out of the big market. This is the kind of solution we can get if governments would bet a couple billion dollars a year in this technologies -better if they were 5 billion- purchansing solar generators, no matter how expensive they look *today*, fostering more research and presumably having in 10 or 15 years a cheap alternative to fossile fuels.

We have wind power low costs in certain countries like mine. We can try producing hydrogen when mills are working full power 2am or Sundays. Technology to produce from methane to octane departing from coal and hydrogen are available since Germany did it in the former Checoslovakia during Worl War II. It's not cheap but it's less expensive than it sounds, and better than burning coal to get the same energy. Besides it avoid sulphur and other coal contents that produces acid rain.

Departing from the glucose molecule for rough comparissons, one ton of dry vegetal matter sequestrate about 1.1 tons of CO2. As some plants grow very fast, for example, bamboo produces between 6 and 17 tons of dry product per year and hectare along Latin America, with very low in situ costs and reasonable earnings  (about 18 dollars a ton), we can dedicate maybe 50 million hectares to sequestrate up to 0.7 billion tons of CO2 a year. Is a big project and it would demand about 10 billion dollars a year -what sounds insane- thus getting rid of the CO2 generated by 1.6 billion oil barrels, valued today in 96 billion dollars -now it sounds not so insane-.


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## Kajjo

Bonjules said:


> Allowing a plant is easy, you still have to decide who will PAY for the damage (Easily billions of dollars). In the US this is a notoriously contentious issue (or they would have built a gazillion of them already). I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about. The issues are quite different over here from over there.


It is an issue in your country because the public and political opinion is grossly against nuclear power. Without accidents no primary damages are to be paid anyway. These are only hypothetical costs. Of course, as mentioned before, costs for long-term disposal have to be taken into account.

Bonjules, just for a second imagine survival would depend on nuclear power. Then new plants could be easily built, maintained and used for dozens of years without any ressource problems. Those issues you mentioned are self-made -- maybe righteously so to avoid too much nuclear plants. This, however, depends on personal political opinions and not on technical or financial feasibility. Laws and requirements are subject to change all the time.

Kajjo


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## aleCcowaN

Today I was reading an article by Lord Anthony Giddens (Español/English) published by La Nación (originally by El País), titled "Una fría realidad que congeló el sueño de la nueva Roma" [I could found its original version in English, published by The Guardian: "So much for the New Rome"] 

This article has just a little to do with global warming, but it made me reflect about the actual situation that prevent any agreement to deal with this issue; quote: "The authority of the United Nations is lower than it has been for many years -  and this in an institution where reform is very difficult. For instance, no-one  can justify the current composition of the UN security council, which reflects  the world as it was in 1945 rather than now. But major reforms are always  hampered by the diversity of national interests in play. The World Bank and the  IMF are also moving more towards the sidelines as other sources of capital  become more widely available"

This is the international panorama that prevents reaching valuable agreements on global warming. Gidding says "Many experts say we only have a window of only some 10 years before trends to  global warming will be irreversible in the short-term. ... However it will be very difficult to reverse  American life-style patterns that are deeply embedded and which make the US the  most polluting country on earth in relation to its population. In the meantime  neither China nor India are even covered by the Kyoto protocol. All of us will  have to prepare for the effects of climate change rather than hoping only to  minimise its advance."

Let's reflect about all these things, as it seems to be more our incapacity to work like allies or to fortify international institutions than the lack of alternatives or high emerging costs what prevents mankind for managing properly what the very mankind did, does, and seemingly will continue to do.


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## Bonjules

Kajjo said:


> It is an issue in your country because the public and political opinion is grossly against nuclear power. Without accidents no primary damages are to be paid anyway. These are only hypothetical costs. Of course, as mentioned before, costs for long-term disposal have to be taken into account.
> 
> Bonjules, just for a second imagine survival would depend on nuclear power. Then new plants could be easily built, maintained and used for dozens of years without any ressource problems. Those issues you mentioned are self-made -- maybe righteously so to avoid too much nuclear plants. This, however, depends on personal political opinions and not on technical or financial feasibility. Laws and requirements are subject to change all the time.
> 
> Kajjo


Kajjo, I am still not following you. Insrance premiums are for POTENTIAL damages. Since the insurance industry
knows that we are dealing with an inherently dangerous and unstable technology(accidents will happen from stupid causes under the best of circumstances) and the payouts might have to be astronomical, nobody wants to underwrite them. It is a simple economic calculation (industry guys, in contrast to you and some others here, don't like to gamble, unless they are in Las Vegas. A big payout could ruin their whole day!). In an U.S.style private economy the state can't just underwrite. It would require Legislation, asking people for money - all very unlikely, especially if they at the same time would get saddled with one of these unwelcome objects in their backyard.
What good are hypothetical arguments? Imagine your survival depended on not having Porsches, refrigerators
Las Vegas casinos, 3o1 ice cream flavors - no problem!
All that stuff is man made, 95% of it is not necessary for survival(99%?). The 'need' for it is just as man made as the stuff itself.


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## aleCcowaN

Buenos Aires, July 9th: A snowstorm, first one since 1918, cover the city. The higher temperature is 1.2° (34°F), the "lowest high" since 1860's. Some photos: the Evita balcony, the park I used to play as a child, effect on fellow citizens, the postcard of the day.

Buenos Aires, September 8th, 3AM (60 days later): temperature is 22° (70°F) and I'm desperately looking for all the summer-anti-mosquito-equipment as I became suddenly attacked by these creatures tonight in these last days of WINTER. This weekend are expected temperatures up to 30° (86°F).

There's a name for this kind of climate: subtropical (short and dry winter, 8 months of summer) and is now 1,500 km. moved to South (or North) than it used to be. Global warming is changing all the Planet as more energy in the atmosphere translates into more intense rains, dries, heat, cold...

With many harvests damaged by frosts, we are now importing potatoes from Canada. Parsley, a good that local greengrocers traditionally gave for free, is now as expensive as veal loin. Vegetables have disappeared from our diet. The trees are still naked. But we have mosquitos.

Good news: maybe half million hybrid cars would be sold this year in USA. Even hybrid SUVs (maybe a contradiction). How many million SUVs are to be sold this year in USA? Why don't they try Viagra instead of SUVs?

Good news: China is getting a huge deal of electricity from Three Gorges Dam and Central. But because of the ill increment of energy consumption they are going to burn up to 2.4 billion tons coal this year.

Alternating wet and dry conditions in the Northern Hemisphere caused a drop in wheat harvest. Last days some news about dries in Australia and Argentina, and probably bad wheat counter-harvests caused a stampede in wheat prices. But grains are being promoting as an alternative "fuel". Let me see if I understood: Don't use less energy, just burn food!!!!

Use of food as a source of energy may be an economical opportunity for the Third World. Yes, they have food to spare! Oh, I forgot, there are so many forests to recycle in croplands just to produce bio-energy. Give me a brake! (sic).

But we have to see "Great Global Warming Swindle", or an apparently anonymous amateur humorous attack on vanilla "An Inconvenient Truth" in youtube (a conservative PR company was denounced to be behind). Maybe a critic analysis on "An Inconvenient Truth", a skeptic yet careful look on Penn and Teller's "Environmental Hysteria", and so on, would keep the debate in the path of good faith.

OK! back to sleep. I just have to bear with mosquitos in winter and eat canned food until a zucchini cost less than a Ferrari. Perhaps I may be thankful for not being a part of the 18 million people displaced by the floods in India and Bangladesh. But I don't know who to thank, weather the misters driving the SUVs or the misters who make Barbie dolls with toxic lead paint, among lots of other misters worldwide.


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## Sidjanga

> Don't use less energy, just burn food![..]


In my opinion, or from my experience, the problem is not only/always people´s indifference towards what is happening. Too many are still too unaware of what they themselves can actually do to reduce energy use, or doing which things or bying which products they actually waste energy or promote energy waste.

  There are so many "hidden" ways you can contribute to increase or diminish energy use. Just to give an example, few people seem to be aware of how energy-costly aluminium production is, or the production of any other kind of wrapper. So just the simple mentioning to whom ever is going to wrap you something for transport (maybe just a piece of cake, that can just as well be wrapped in a piece of paper) that aluminium is not necessary and apart from that, energywise, the worst alternative, can be a good start. 
And so on with millions of pieces of cake and millions of other similar things (not leaving electric devices in "stand by", not leaving open the fridge half an eternity because we have difficulties deciding what to choose, or while we are talking on the phone [I have seen all this], simple, but efficient. 
To defrost the fridge from time to time. Not to put the airconditioning at 25ºC in winter (or at 15ºC in summer) just because you love to be in bikini or pullover, respectively, in your living room even in that season. And I think that many people actually aren´t aware not even of the fact that it´s a real "crime" energywise to leave open the window with the airconditioning on. Or just do completely without it. It´s lovely; I know what I am talking about. Try to do without the car, o even without a car. This also is wonderful. 

  We are all responsible. We just have to assume this responsibility, and try to communicate the message that concerns us all in a way that people "want to hear it", a way that makes them see that for them too it is highly convenient or desirable to (want to) reduce energy "consume", and that it doesn´t even hurt.  Just on the contrary.

This is, of course, just one reason for the energy demand being –or remaining- high; but it is one after all. One with endless aspects and possibilities to be tackled.

Sadly, indifference seems to have become a quite popular disease all over the world, so it might be more difficult, but certainly no reason to give up.


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