Carbon Ain't Really Pollution

paraclete · Jul 13, 2009, 05:29 PM

Carbon Ain't Really Pollution. It's an interesting slogan and there are a number of adherents to this point of view from those who think it has something to do with the sun spot cycle or Earth's orbit or those who just arn't convinced it is possible for us to have such a large impact from such a small (relatively) growth in Carbon Dioxide.

So the question is; is our science diffinative enough to be able to have the answers? There are many things scientists have been certain about previously than are now disgarded theories. A couple of years ago the large hurricanes that devistated the US were hailed as a sample of what to expect and yet those events haven't repeated any more often than they have been observed in the past. In the scientific world if you cannot repeat the expirement then your theory fails. Do you think that this is all a little paraniod force fed by political interests? Do you think that we have gone too far and are destroying the planet at an increasing rate? As I sit here in the low temperatures of winter I wonder where is that global warming that promised I would have milder winters? I begin to think not in my lifetime

What I think is that we are finding it all too hard to come to grips with the possibility of climate change. If it isn't going to happen tomorrow literally we soon loose interest because the struggles of daily living are what we must focus on. Let's not be influenced by some catchy statistics that may or may not show a link between atmospheric carbon and mean average temperature when there are more important reasons why we might want to get away from the carbon cycle as a source of energy.

excon · Jul 15, 2009, 10:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

how much is too much ? during the Cretaceous period carbon dioxide ranged as high as 2,000 parts per million( ppm) ;more than five times today's values . Life on the earth ;both plant and animal thrived. That's just an inconvenient scientific fact.

Hello again, tom:

Nope. I'm not like the IDers. Fact is fact. And, you caught me being inflammatory and inarticulate. For that, I apologize. I certainly shouldn't have used the word "kill us", because it probably won't - at least a few of us anyway. The ones who it will kill are the ones who can't relocate themselves. That's probably MOST of the world.

There was no polar ice during the mild warm, subtropical Cretaceous. The land was covered with forests surrounded by water. The sea levels rose during the mid-Cretaceous, covering about one-third of the land area.

Now, I dunno about you. But, that represents a drastic change in the way we live our lives. It's apparently ok with you that that happens to the world.

And, you think I'm the one who is smoking wacky tabacky.

excon

tomder55 · Jul 15, 2009, 10:37 AM

I just don't know what is "normal" for the world .

My own pet theory is that the earth is still recovering from that non-human- made disaster that plunged the world into an ice age .

You are of course correct that we should make every effort to reduce HARMFUL human emissions .
All this C02 bs is blowing smoke alright .

Ken Lay is the father of carbon cap and trade and Kyoto . enuff said ....you can look it up. He and Enron made a killing with the 1990 Clean Air Act's sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program and he was looking for the next pollutant to exploit .He chose CO2. The only problem was that C02 was not a pollutant so the EPA could not regulate it. But he got the Goracle on board ;who sees global environmental regulations as the quickest way to global governance ...and the rest is history.

excon · Jul 15, 2009, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomder55

You are of course correct that we should make every effort to reduce HARMFUL human emissions .... All this C02 bs is blowing smoke alright .

Hello again, tom:

We're not as far apart on this issue as it may appear. I'm talking MACRO. You're talking MICRO.

You're probably not wrong about cap and trade. That's a politicians creation, so I doubt that it will fix the problem it's aimed at.

But, once you clear away all the political chaff, you wind up with one fact. We ARE running out of fossil fuel. Even if we have a relatively long term supply of say coal, it doesn't change the fact that we ARE running out of it.

Combine that fact with the fact that burning fossil fuel creates a dirty atmosphere. And then people will argue about what that's gonna do.... And, then they come up with all sorts if bizarre solutions to it, like cap and trade, and argue about what that's gonna do.

But, if we just skipped to the chase, it won't matter that burning fossil fuels might or might not have been the death of us. Who would care anyway? We HAVE to stop using it, because we're running out. It's certainly better to plan for running out, instead of just running out, which is what we've been doing. Doncha think?

AND, who would care whether cap and trade is a pile of crap either, because that fix, if it IS a fix at all, is only short term one at best.

Plus, who would care what the worlds "normal" temperature is anyway? We have a vested interest in keeping it the way it is NOW. That's OUR normal.

The chase??? Renewable green energy sources. That doesn't look like a negative to me from an entrepreneurial point of view. I see all sorts of opportunities there to make jillions and establish the US as an industrial leader once again. Plus, it certainly might bring us out of our monetary problems...

Did I mention the benefit of NOT sending tons of cash to the Arabs???? Oh.

So, it's time for a left turn. I BIG left turn.

Contrary to some, part of that BIG left turn includes nuclear. I'm no shill for the left.

excon

ETWolverine · Jul 15, 2009, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by excon

Hello again, tom:

We're not as far apart on this issue as it may appear. I'm talking MACRO. You're talking MICRO.

You're probably not wrong about cap and trade. That's a politicians creation, so I doubt that it will fix the problem it's aimed at.

But, once you clear away all the political chaff, you wind up with one fact. We ARE running out of fossil fuel. Even if we have a relatively long term supply of say coal, it doesn't change the fact that we ARE running out of it.

Combine that fact with the fact that burning fossil fuel creates a dirty atmosphere. And then people will argue about what that's gonna do.... And, then they come up with all sorts if bizarre solutions to it, like cap and trade, and argue about what that's gonna do.

But, if we just skipped to the chase, it won't matter that burning fossil fuels might or might not have been the death of us. Who would care anyway? We HAVE to stop using it, because we're running out. It's certainly better to plan for running out, instead of just running out, which is what we've been doing. Doncha think?

AND, who would care whether cap and trade is a pile of crap either, because that fix, if it IS a fix at all, is only short term one at best.

Plus, who would care what the worlds "normal" temperature is anyway? We have a vested interest in keeping it the way it is NOW. That's OUR normal.

The chase??? Renewable green energy sources. That doesn't look like a negative to me from an entrepreneurial point of view. I see all sorts of opportunities there to make jillions and establish the US as an industrial leader once again. Plus, it certainly might bring us out of our monetary problems...

Did I mention the benefit of NOT sending tons of cash to the Arabs???? Oh.

So, it's time for a left turn. I BIG left turn.

Contrary to some, part of that BIG left turn includes nuclear. I'm no shill for the left.

excon

Excon,

This is the first post on this subject in ages that you have posted that makes SENSE.

Congratulations.

Yes, using fosil fuels is a temporary solution to our energy problem, be that a 10-year or a 100-year solution. We do indeed need to develop alternative energy sources. NOT because of anything having to do with global warming, but because from an economic point of view, it's a supply and demand issue... and the supply will EVENTUALLY run out. There's an additional reason... that of energy independence from our enemies. Alternative fuels should be developed.

But let's leave the global warming BS out of it, shall we? There are plenty of good reasons to develop other fuel sources, but Global Warming isn't one of them

That said, in the interim, until we have developed these alternative fuel sources, we still need to fuel our industry, our heating and our transportation. We do not yet have alternative fuel technologies that work.

Wind farms are an unworkable idea. It takes more energy to transport wind-powered electricity to its end-users than is actually created.

Alchohol fuels from food products is an economically unworkable concept. In the past two years, using corn or other bio-fuel crops for fuel instead of for food has driven the cost of food through the roof. Meat now costs more because the feed corn is being diverted for use as a fuel. Such fuels are cost-prohibitive.

Natural gas is a good energy source, but it is no more renewable than fossil fuels. We can and should use natural gas as a fuel source, but it is no more reliable than oil in the long run. Also, it is difficult to store and transport because it is explosive in gas form and expensive to cool to liquid form. Problematic, but a good short-term solution.

Nuclear energy is a good, safe, renewable source of energy. France fuels half the country (maybe more) via nuclear energy. Problem is that too many on the left are afraid of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is POLITICALLY unfeasable. The politics CAN be overcome with enough time and money, but until then, it's an untennable fuel source for political reasons.

In short, every alternative source of energy has its problems. Given enough time to develop these fuel sources, we could probably overcome each and every one of them. But those solutions are decades in the future. Also, even if we came up with a solution that everyone is happy with, it will take decades to completely move the entire nation to a new fuel source.

And we need fuel NOW.

So... here's what I propose:

We should develop alternative fuels as quickly as we can. We should stop wasting time with what doesn't work, and instead work on developing the most promising alternative fuels. It will take years to develop them and the sooner we get started, the sooner we will have a solution.

But in the meantime, in order to keep our economy running, and in order to keep homes warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and in order to keep cars on the road, we need to continue using oil fuels. At a minimum it will take a decade before we are ready to switch to something else. For that period of time, we need to continue with oil use.

BUT... just because we need to use oil doesn't mean we need to hand our enemies the economic power to hurt us. We can create energy independence RIGHT NOW. We have oil sources within the USA that can be tapped within months, and will result in economic freedom from the likes of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. For purely economic reasons, we should be digging for oil, at least for the next few years.

Then, if the scientists are able to develop alternative fuel sources to the degree that they become feasable from an economic, political and infrastructure standpoint, we can move over to the alternative fuels.

In other words, we shouldn't cripple ourselves today in the hopes that SOMEDAY there will be a good alternative fuel source. Develop that fuel source today, but at the same time create energy independence.

And leave the global warming stuff out of it... it just confuses people for no good reason. We have enough reasons to develop alternative fuels without resulting to faulty science.

Elliot

speechlesstx · Jul 15, 2009, 01:45 PM

More proof this is all politics and doesn't have a darn thing to do with cooling the planet...which has been cooling for roughly the last decade anyway.

Quote:

The masks slips for global-warming activists
posted at 2:17 pm on July 15, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Share on Facebook | printer-friendly

The global-warming climate-change movement has insisted that their primary concern is to keep the planet from overheating due to greenhouse-gas emissions. If so, one would expect that they would stick to plans that cut those emissions and focused on nothing else. However, the latest proposal on international carbon caps shows that the movement is less concerned with carbon emissions and more concerned about kneecapping economic success:

Researchers in the U.S. have proposed a new way of allocating responsibility for carbon emissions they say could solve the impasse between developed and developing countries.

The method sets national targets for reducing carbon emissions based on the number of high-income earners in each country, following the theory that people who earn more generate more CO2.

“It’s fairer than some other ideas out there in the sense that we attribute responsibility for emission reductions based only on the number of high-emitting people in the country — if the country has large number of people who are high-emitters then it has more work to do,” said Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at Princeton Environmental Institute. …

“By and large for every 10 percent increase in income, the emissions from a certain person go up about six to 10 percent. This is true pretty much everywhere in the world. … What happens is that initially people spend their money mostly on direct use like transportation, air conditioning, heating and cooling and so on,” Chakravarty said. “But they also spend a lot of their money on buying goods, and buying stuff. And to make stuff you use energy and you produce emissions.”

Let’s make this clear. First, Princeton has to resort to the hypothesis (not “theory”, which indicates a substantial level of proof in scientific jargon) that higher-income people generate more carbon emissions because they can’t measure it. When people use the phrases “By and large” and “pretty much everywhere,” they’re not speaking scientifically but giving opinions. In this case, they’re looking at data on emissions by country (an inexact science anyway) and comparing it to rankings from the World Bank, hardly a rigorous scientific process.

Second, this makes little sense anyway. The act of earning a living doesn’t generate carbon emissions — consumption and production do. If you wanted to tax for carbon emissions, you would tax consumption or production directly, not income, even if you can’t scientifically relate carbon emissions to either. The relation between income and emissions is at best indirect. At least consumption relates fairly directly to production, and a tax on the former would definitely suppress the latter in any economic system.

So why focus on income? The entire point of the global movement to arrest energy production is to punish the industrial nations for their wealth. This is just redistributionism writ large. They don’t want to limit carbon emissions per se; they just want the right people to emit carbon. Nations like the US, the UK, and other Western nations would have to be out of their minds to agree to a regime that allows China and India to emit far more carbon per capita than themselves, in order to meet some Utopian ideal of “fairness” in economic success.

If activists honestly want to limit carbon emissions, then they would argue for consistent limits for all nations. This kind of system reveals the underlying animosity to modernization and economic success that lies at the heart of the environmental movement in general and global-warming hysterics in particular.

I'm sorry, but how the heck can anyone take these climate change morons seriously?

paraclete · Jul 15, 2009, 04:35 PM

Tom
I agree, this whole thing has an element of paranoia about it. Perhaps the sky is falling, perhaps it isn't, Many have been highly selective about the statistics they have used.
We all know we have to change the way we produce energy because we will have problems with sustainability and there are problems associated with carbon cycle energy production but we must be careful or we may have that depression we are trying to avoid.

There are people trying to prove it's getting colder using statistics for the last ten years, there are people comparing us with various periods using ice core data and there are those who are correctly observing the glaciers are continuing to melt but what is unscientific is that we are fortune telling because of all this analysis, but they have no comparative industralised period to compare us with, a fact that has thus far eluded them

speechlesstx · Jul 15, 2009, 05:20 PM

And then there are those who finally admit, the models may be all wrong.

paraclete · Jul 15, 2009, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

And then there are those who finally admit, the models may be all wrong.

no! really! there is actually something our worthy scientists don't know. well who would have suspected that?

tomder55 · Jul 16, 2009, 03:03 AM

I smell Y2K

ETWolverine · Jul 16, 2009, 06:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by speechlesstx

And then there are those who finally admit, the models may be all wrong.

Excon,

Have you read this article? Are they IDers too? Are you willing yet to admit that the so-called scientists who support global warming are unsure of themselves? Are you willing to admit yet that the science isn't "proven" or "settled" and that there is still a great bit more research to do? Are you willing to admit that they could be wrong, even though their opinions (and I use that word deliberately) closely match yours?

Elliot