blaen99

iTrader: (6)

One thing I've never understood.

Why is the US the only country in the world with an industry based around skepticism, and the only country in the world with a populace who wants to ignore the hard data and pretend it isn't happening?

Some of the skeptics arguments are absolutely crazy - at this point, just looking at the hard data and the numbers, there's no doubt it is happening. The question isn't if it is or not, nor has the debate been about whether it's happening in any serious scientific discussion for years if not decades - it's about the severity. Even among the serious skeptics, it's about severity now, not the existence of such.

golftdibrad

I have little doubt that the planet is getting a little warmer, but I DO NOT think its a problem caused by humans and its sure as hell not from CO2 if we do have something to do with it at all. When you look at the data with the assumptions of the people who build even the most extreme models, if the industrial revolution didn't happen we'd be at the same spot. Something like 99.9 percent of the CO2 cycle is natural; things dieing, trees burning, ROCKS, etc. While be burn alot of fuel it is so small by mass in comparison to nature its not even worth discussing seriously.

Also, the rest of the world is stupid. Look to Greece and youtube for any evidence.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

....wut? Are you serious? All I can gather from your response is that you want to form an opinion along ideological means but never bothered to research or try to understand it.

How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?

Here is a link on a great deal more of the skeptics "arguments", with debunking:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

.... Are you serious?

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

Global warming vs. air quality are two mutually exclusive arguments, would you two quit blabbering about them as if they were one in the same?

golftdibrad

I'm not going to crap on Joe's thread anymore, but yes. As someone who has looked at it from both sides, gone and dug through IPCC data and not just looked at this or that website, I concluded myself that the whole thing is a sham. I encourage you to do the same and not just read the 'conclusions' section.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Oh god, a Climategate believer

Yeah, soz Joe. Nothin' here anymore.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

This is what baffles me. The general public thinking they understand climate science better than the scientists who do the work and got the degree.

If this were a climate science forum and we were all modifying our personal weather stations with turbochargers, I might not make this post. But it's not. This is a car forum.

It's like reading WebMD or Yahoo Answers to diagnose and treat your supposed illness. You simply do not have the understanding and experience.

AND THAT, my friends, is why we are stupid. We don't accept the fact that we don't know something.

golftdibrad

I have an engineering degree and a technical background; hell i recently got me PE and am now a licensed professional. I am very good at reading charts, tables and graphs. And what I do at work borderlines on scientist, so I am good at looking at data with a critical eye. I think I am qualified to pas judgement.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

Great. Call up a scientific organization and see if they'd hire you as a climate scientist. When they say "no" ask them if it's political.

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

Oh ****, we got a rocket surgeon up in here! LOL

I'm not going to act like I know much about the climate, but that's not going to stop me from theorizing.

So the theory goes:
There is only one way for energy to arrive at or leave this planet: Electromagnetic radiation. Sure, there are probably other ways for energy input/output, but compared to the volume of energy we input/output through electromagnetic energy, an incoming meteorite, or jettisoning solid fuel into space are negligable.

Basically, any energy that we "create" from fuels, wind, water, etc., is energy which arrived on earth via electromagnetic radiation.

Our planet glows with electromagnetic radiation - during the daytime, we reflect massive amounts of it back into space. At night-time we still send a significant amount of EMR into space in/beyond the infrared spectrum. The inflow/outflow of EMR that we experience then, on a day-to-day basis, is so catastrophically phenomenal that only the mad scientists can begin to comprehend it.

Now consider the amount of energy we "create" here on earth. It's negligable, seemingly nonexistant. We could replace every single electric generation facility in the United States with a 100mile square solar power plant in Arizona - at 10% efficiency. At 100% efficiency, it would require a mere 32miles square to replace every single electric generation facility in the United States.

Ok, so that doesn't include automobiles, it is only an example of how much the sun factors into the heat of our planet. I would argue that, given the quantities of roads/buildings/urban areas which convert solar EMR directly into heat instead of reflecting a lot of that EMR back into space as "green light", any increase we may have seen in global temperatures is probably more related to the light->heat conversion than burning of fossil fuels.

Regarding "greenhouse gasses", the only way for them to effectively increase global temperatures would be to convert EMR to heat energy, unfortunately for them, warmer temps mean that, at night, the earth "glows" brighter within the infrared spectrum. There really is no long-term way for energy to be stored on earth as "heat", then.

For simplicity's sake, lets assume that the average global temperature is around 300* (which is actually a plausible number given that I don't really have a clue what it actually is). An increase in the EMR output of the sun of a mere 1% then, increases global temperatures to 303* (or from 80.33*F to 85.75*F) that's a 5.42*f change in global temps from a 1% increase in EMR from our sun. What is science arguing about? 0.25 degrees? That's a small, mildly lukewarm spot on our sun.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

tell me about the additive properties of increased EMR and the greenhouse effect.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

Related to that, I gave a link which debunked everything that was said by the skeptics in this thread with reputable, verified sources and that even went into exhausting detail explaining the math and the science...

...And we still have people giving erroneous information. Yes, I'm looking at you Foogy, as it even went into detail debunking everything you assert in your post.

As an example, I'm absolutely baffled at how people can accept that climategate is real, or might be real when the whole thing was thoroughly debunked (See: Reference to IPCC papers) several dozen times. The supposed climategate scandal wasn't just debunked once, or twice. It's even been debunked by at least half a dozen major oversight committees which were convened to prove it, not debunk it.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'm not entirely certain, but I think you've misinterpreted the principle mechanism of action of "greenhouse gasses."

You need to first consider how a physical greenhouse works- the kind built out of glass panels that you keep plants inside of during winter. Solar radiation enters the greenhouse through the glass, and causes thermal heating of the air. The air wants to reject this heat back out, but it is prevented from doing so conductively or from co-mingling with the outside environment by the physical barrier of the glass.

The fundamental theory behind "the greenhouse effect" is similar.

Under normal circumstances, X amount of solar radiation hits the earth. Some of this is reflected right back off, and some of it is absorbed into the ground and the atmosphere, creating heat. At night, this heat tends to dissipate back off the earth in the form of infrared. Some of this infrared radiation is captured by the atmosphere, converted to heat, and re-radiated in all directions, including back down to the earth.

This process tends to reach a point of equilibrium, such that for X amount of incident solar energy counterbalanced by Y amount of re-radiation followed by Z amount of atmospheric re-absorption, the average temperature of the planetary body will hover around a certain point, and the observable temperature spread at any given location on the body will fall within a certain range.


Now, not all gasses which compose the atmosphere are equally efficient at this IR recapture. Nitrogen, oxygen and argon, for instance, are almost totally inert with respect to infrared energy- they neither capture nor reflect it. Other gasses, such as methane, CO2 and ozone are more efficient at capturing IR and converting it to heat, as is water vapor.


So by changing the proportion of these gasses as compared to the inert gases within the atmosphere, the ratio of energy "lost" to IR radiation away from the earth to that "captured" by IR absorption in the atmosphere will change, and thus, the average amount of heat energy present on the planet will also change. If the atmosphere is "thinned" of highly IR-responsive gasses, more energy will be lost and the temperature will drop. If more of these gasses are added, then more energy will be captured and the temperature will rise.

You're right in that the magnitude of the changes is not huge in the scale to which we're accustomed. Nobody is going to start growing oranges in Sibera, nor is downhill skiing likely to become a national pastime of Ecuador.


The big question, therefore, is not whether "global warming" is either possible or likely, but rather how much of it can be tolerated, and what its likely consequences will be.



It doesn't need to be "long-term storage" on a geological scale, only on a daily scale.

Consider the cooling system of your automobile. When you park the car in your garage at night, most of the heat energy stored within the engine dissipates into the surrounding air, and the temperature of the engine reaches parity with the environment.

But what about when you are driving down the road?

The cooling system has the capability to reject a maximum of "X" amount of heat energy into the environment continuously. It is sized such that "X" tends to be greater than the amount of heat which the engine generates on average. The system also has sufficient thermal mass that it can absorb additional heat beyond its capacity to dissipate (such as during short bursts of boosted acceleration up a hill) and then radiate that heat once you're slowed down, much as any given part of the earth absorbs solar energy during the day, and then radiates it at night.

Consider, however, what happens if the cooling system is compromised. Maybe it's a blockage in the radiator, maybe it's a stuck thermostat. The net result is that the value of "X" decreases. Even though the car will still cool to ambient when you park it at night, it can no longer dissipate as much heat continuously when in operation. Thus, the average operating temp of the engine will rise until you're eventually buying a new head gasket.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

No.

The total amount of solar radiation striking the earth's atmosphere, in full sunlight and at the point nearest the sun, is around 1,368 watts per square meter. Averaging this out for both the rotation of the earth in the day / night cycle as well as the tilt and eccentricity of orbit during a full year, the average incidence over time is about 342 watts / m2. Some of this is reflected by the atmosphere, so by the time we get down to ground level, we can count on about 240 watts / m2. That's total energy, ignoring conversion efficiency.

Now, in 2008, the US consumed 4.369 petawatt-hours of electricity. That's 4,369,000,000,000,000 watt-hours per year. (We're #1!)

At a theoretical 100% conversion efficiency, an "average" solar collector would have to have an area of 18,204,166,666,666.7 square meters to capture that much energy. That's 7,028,668 square miles.

For reference, the entire continental US is only 2,959,064 square miles.

The most efficient EXPERIMENTAL solar collector presently in operation is the Tessera Solar SunCatcher array in Maricopa, AZ. This system, which reflects solar energy onto a Stirling engine, holds the world's record for solar conversion at 31.25%. It sits on 1,525 acres and generates a paltry 1.5 MW AT ITS PEAK. (By comparison, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station occupies 84 acres of land and generates 2,340 MW all day, every day, rain or shine.)

So, assuming we used this same 31.25% efficient technology, and assuming we figure out a way to make the dishes square so that not a single bit of area is wasted between them, we'd need to construct an array which occupies 22,491,737 square miles to satisfy the US's electrical needs. That's 40% of the entire dry-land area of the earth.

Obviously we can decrease this if we bunch all the dishes together in a band around the equator rather than distributing them equally, but you're not going to get an increase of SIX ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE out of that. If the amount of solar energy striking Phoenix were one million times greater than the amount of energy striking an "average" city such as Toronto, the entire state of Arizona would have long since sublimated into its constituent subatomic elements. And, of course, we'r only talking about the US here. Other countries need electricity, too. China, for example, is only about 2-3% behind us right now, and will overtake within a couple of years.



So I'm afraid I'm going to need to see a citation quoted to support the 32 square mile claim.

curly

iTrader: (25)

I'm afraid I'm going to have to clean up this thread. It's become incredibly boring in the last four ------- pages.

Stein

iTrader: (46)

You can't do that. Joe just did lots of math for us.

blaen99

iTrader: (6)

But math and science are boring!

y8s

iTrader: (8)

I need more updates on hot girls on electric bikes with Joe Perez following.

golftdibrad

No electric or Joe content, but sweet anyways

Chicks and Bikes

curly

iTrader: (25)

Wow, chicks that ride bikes are not hot.