[quote who="Daiwa" reply="1403" id="3422990"]Loved the opening sentence (forgive the PDF copy/paste formatting issues): The anthropogenically driven rise in ½CO2atm is well established(1) but its effect on future climate is less certain (2). The references are, of course, to IPCC 4. 2007. I think that's the one in which the claim of Himalayan glacier retreat was based on an article from a travel magazine, but I could be wrong - coulda been IPCC 5 or 3 or... What was
This is an interesting article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/24/0902323106.full.pdf Maybe we've got more to worry about than we think ?? Well at least it shows that it's quite a challenge to reconstruct ancient atmospheric CO2 concentrations. I give those researchers my R.E.S.P.E.C.T. :)
[quote who="Ekko_Tek" reply="1393" id="3422797"]So it refers to having new insights, being creative, going beyond, lateral thinking, etc.[/quote] Ahhhh, that. Like cold fusion, or having cars running on nothing but water... that kind of stuff ? Or maybe like putting solar panels on the Moon's poles, and beaming energy towards earth? By lasers for example? Or you could go for population control and rationing of a daily amount of energy. Or you c
Dutch education is getting worse but all children have education and can make something of their lives if they do their best, that's what matters most. I think education is overrated anyways: after school you get a nice certificate and then you go to a company and there you have to learn from scratch again. Is that different from the US ? I'm 42, almost 43. What do you mean by "out-of-the-box" thinking?
[quote who="Daiwa" reply="1388" id="3422770"]What a sham education in NL has apparently become. Got the youngun's thinking the only solutions are statist solutions. Can't imagine anything outside that box it appears.[/quote] What do you mean by that... if that's intended for me: I'm not young and I had a very good education. There are limited sources from where to get energy - there's no such thing as "out of the box".
Waterworld. (Not that we're running out of land, but given an exploding population we will ultimately have nowhere to go but to build cities on water and use land for growing crops ... until perhaps we reach a point where most people live on water)
I don't think a change towards solar energy should be done on a personal level and not one home at a time. I also think that there should be no subsidies, regulation will be enough. For example, a government could place a ban on building new fossil fuel plants. This will force energy companies to invest in other forms of energy. I think it can really be as simple as that. I would prefer that big companies take care of it and build large solar array plants. Then you
Look at this... even fossil fuels are subsidized ... https://www.iea.org/publications/worldenergyoutlook/resources/energysubsidies/ although mainly in oil-producing and poorer nations... but what a waste of money.
Maybe we could shift to a hydrogen-based economy then. But maybe it's a bit impractical, since it's so volatile and even corrosive to metals used in transportation grids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_pipeline_transport Or maybe we could shift to a CH4 based economy. There are some ways to create CH4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
[quote who="Turchany" reply="1361" id="3422522"]Maybe Thorium reactors will change the situation of energy production, though I have more faith in fusion power.[/quote] To me, it sounds like a terrible thing to be building thousands of new nuclear plants on the world. http://www.pressenza.com/2013/08/thorium-reactors-and-nuclear-weapons-proliferation-
You underestimate the importance of recent developments. The entire DNA of humans (and other species) were mapped. I think that's huge. The function of different genes are mapped... pretty amazing stuff imo. This technology and understanding of the genes can help to produce crops that are more resistant to heat and drought. Advances in computer technology (and engineering) and in software (modeling of particles) will hopefully make fusion tech a reality
Carbon-reinforced compounds maybe? Those existed for a while, but they are used on a large scale nowadays. Digital memory and Flash memory, better than a CD. Digital TV. Flat-screen TV. Better software and software development tools. Those are really a lot better than 20 years ago. There were some advances in nuclear fusion recently... not major yet, but it's a step forward. Advances in solar panel tech. Lithium b
[quote who="Turchany" reply="1349" id="3422403"]Can you think of major inventions after 1990?[/quote] 12 nm computer chips and parallel computing (graphics cards)! Just 12 atoms per transistor!!! Fleece fabric !! Nice and warm. LED lights.
[quote who="Daiwa" reply="1343" id="3422304"]Tough call when there's a 50% chance that doing nothing will actually save our asses. [/quote] Where do you get that 50% percentage from? Because as far as I know, evidence points to an absolute certainty (100%) that my country will flood in the coming centuries if we continue as usual. [quote who="Daiwa" reply="1343" id="3422304"] It appears I have greater confidence in our species' survival capa
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1341" id="3422290"]40 years ago the "Experts" were certain global cooling was going to bring about the next ice age.[/quote] That is a myth. http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-cooling Are you really questioning 40 years worth of scientific and observational evidence because of this ??? <
They'll roam again some day. Yes capitalism is about money. In terms of money: - Is moving a few hundred coastal cities inland because of sea level rise cheaper than prevention? - Is the loss of a thousands of square km of farmland and the associated rise in food prices cheaper than prevention? - Is the loss of thousands of species cheaper than prevention? Is this even quantifiable? - Is the increased outbr
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1330" id="3422256"]By the way: "It's just national pride" is the kind of AGW proponent arrogance that pisses people off.[/quote] Really... it's national pride that protects local industries, local laws and implementations. In order to make an alternative like solar panels affordable, we've to get rid of all those exceptions and come up with "one product to fit all". Otherwise yes... then it will truly be unaffordabl
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1318" id="3422220"]so drastically oversimplifies the "solution" to AGW as to be laughable. It's not simply short sighted politicians or cheap citizens that are preventing us from switching to zero carbon energy. Such a solution using modern energy generation is hugely complex, would necessitate VAST sums of money, would take years to implement and requires a level of international cooperation that simply isn't going to happen. [/quote] Yes I didn'
[quote who="smeagolheart" reply="37" id="3421861"]It's better to have whales save the day than teddy bears, right?[/quote] That movie was hilarious. "Hello computer... Hello Computer... HELLO COMPUTER"
1. Imo it's pretty simple: people who think there's a conspiracy just don't have a clue how difficult it is to handle real-life measurements. They think the world is perfect, measurements are perfect. Well wake up: they aren't. There are biases and artificacts in the data. Sometimes there are trends in the data. For example a measurement device grows older and older and as a result the data slowly change in time. What used to be 0.0 degree become
[quote who="caseagainstfaith" reply="1288" id="3421908"]I have avoided this thread, because, well, it is so frustrating to deal with denialists.[/quote] Very wise of you, and it's also addictive. I've tried to stop but I just couldn't. What kind of CO2 level do you think is acceptable? (To be honest I think 400 ppm is already the limit, because it's similar to a period of much higher sea level and a 600 ppm level will be di
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1280" id="3421845"]Their predictions on what will happen is a complete crap shoot once you get out passed a few days. Even allowing for some randomness, how you extrapolate that into an ability to predict accurately what is going to happen on a global scale 50 or 100 years from now? It's ludicrous. [/quote] All you've got to say is this: [a] we cannot predict a single storm perfectly and [b] therefore we cannot make any conclusions about t
[quote who="Daiwa" reply="1277" id="3421838"]From banging his head on the wall repeatedly maybe?[/quote] Wtf is that about. And what does it really matter if the models are a bit off. The only thing that's important is that we get an indication of statistical properties of future precipitation levels, storm frequencies etcetera. Who gives a damn about the details, they're just not important for such a study. Of course you can insi
[quote who="Kantok" reply="1274" id="3421833"]My problem is with the immediacy of it all ([/quote] The "immediacy" comes from the viewpoint that we cannot solve the problem instantly. The longer we wait, the less time we will have to solve the problem. So it's mostly a matter of time. Someone sets an arbitrary target, like, let's not let levels of CO2 increase to more than 500 ppm, to avoid too much melting of the ice sheets and too much
You misunderstand... the climate models CAN simulate realistic storm systems. It's only impossible to predict exactly what happens a year into the future, because of its chaotic nature. You can still derive meaningful things about the future from the models, in a statistical sense. You can say for example something like that we expect that on average storms will be stronger and bring heavier rains. That doesn't mean that every storm will be like
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