@VDCDriver Thanks, I have a good memory, but it’s short sometimes!
@keith…
You can bet that when 95% of the science community felt that way, legislation was in a much better position to pass. It does take some time for all the facts to sift out and enough of the community to come on board. Sme will never come around, and some are still paid to say cigarette smoking isn’t harmful and the ozone depletion problem was a hoax. Some scientist are still paid to say climate change is a hoax too.
I really don’t know myself but 20 years ago in Minnesota I was concerned about the ice age coming but now with global warming, I’m less concerned staying here. Of course Minnesota was covered by a giant glacier some years ago and it melted. I think it was 500 years ago that Europe had their massive cooling causing crop failures and famine. So I don’t know, there have been huge shifts in climate in the past and I 'spose one should own land both north and south just in case.
Of course over many hundreds and even thousands of years there are changes in our climate. We can always doubt what is happening based on personal sampling, observations and our own limited general knowledge of climate evolution.
But just like many of us who can’t understand a lot of things in science, from our own perspective like evolution and relativity, we certainly don’t have trouble quoting with certainty that they exist based upon our limited knowledge and trust of the scientific process. This process has been entrusted with defining our existence of earth and for the most part we question it without doubt when the scientific community agrees with 95% certaInty that something exists.
We accept it that is until one side decides to make it political because it benefits them financially to do so…then hypocry takes over and we have to find away to not trust the same group we entrust with our own well being in every other area. Gee, all those scientists at NASA get all those tax dollars to explore space and as a group believe in climate change and man’s roll in it because of their related observations.
Think of that the next time you do anything that uses a satillite. Guess that’s just about every time we communicate and entertain ourselves. If we were to take a space ride in one of their crafts one day and we had a choice of traveling according to the group of scientist that did or did not believe in climate change, the 5% group would have few takers…assuming they were even competent enough or allowed to build such a craft
The medieval warm period, when wine was grown all over England, followed by a cold period in the 15th and 16th centuries, all took place when human caused warming was absent!
Dutch and Flemish 16th centurey paintings in museums have numerous winters scenes with canals and rivers frozen solid. These circumstances now only happen occasionally.
The “hockey stick” temperature rise, starting with the industrial period has now proven to be a manipulated fraud. As was a large amount of “scientific” input of those 500 scientists (many of them very junior researchers or amateurs) making up the Climate Change Committee. The final report was further massaged politically to produce the final scary result to give the United Nations the power to get us to change our beahavior.
Again, human behavior contributes to climate change, but getting rid of fossal fuels will have more undesirable side-effect than any climate benefits.
To return to my earlier theme of posting some accurate information in this thread regarding government spending, I happened upon this editorial from Forbes magazine (not exactly one of the more liberal publications out there), which was published a few months ago.
I can almost guarantee that you will be surprised that these statistics run totally counter to the talking points used by The GOP:
The politics of climate change has become a conflict with the public being pressured into taking one side or the other but most Americans are relatively ignorant of the details. Climate change teams are now SUVs vs Priusi, Amtrac vs Boeing, Perrier vs Brita, etc. and good sense be damned. Personally, on the issue of climate change, I don’t think that the sky is falling but it does seem that we, as a nation, are blindly rushing toward oblivion with regard to energy in several ways. I don’t trust the paid experts who want to assure US that fracking is perfectly safe. We are being told that if we turn the oil/natural gas companies loose utopia will soon be realized. Corporate America’s grand plan to build utopia on home equity leaves me quite skeptical of any new plans.
Maybe adding another $1/gallon tax to gasoline would actually benefit US in the long run.
There is no doubt that climate change is happening, but then climate change has always been happening, its a given. There is also no doubt that the human population has had an effect on the climate change, the only question here is how much?
Climatologists who have been studying ice cores in Antarctica have found at least one period of time where the earths average temperature rose 10° in a 50 year period, way faster than it is rising now. There have also been other periods of rapid rise that match or exceed the current rate of rise.
Today, there is a lot of concern that the ice cap of Greenland is melting, but those who raise the alarm on that either don’t know or have forgotten that Greenland was a greenland when the Vikings first discovered it. They had farms and communities there until it froze over on them.
But when Greenland was last a green land, there weren’t billions of people living within 15’ of sea level. Even today, the earth is still below its average global temperature. The problem facing the scientific community is that they don’t fully understand what drive the global temperature up. The know that volcanic eruptions and an occasional meteor will drive the temperature down, but because we don’t fully understand what drives it up, we cannot agree exactly how much human intervention is involved.
Barring a major volcanic eruption or another errant meteor, the earths temperature will rise. The most we can hope for is to slow down the rise by minimizing the factors of human involvement in that rise. But to do that, are we willing to do the things we know will work? Nuclear power plants will help reduce that rise, how close will you allow one to your home in order to slow down climate change? Whose backyard do we put those in?
Don’t get me wrong here, I do believe that we a partly responsible for the global warming and we should do as much as possible to minimize it. The big difference between myself and many “environmentalist” is that I believe in embracing technology to solve this problem and not forcing everyone back into the stone age. I believe we need more nuclear power plants, even if I have to live near one. I also embrace wind power. I think solar power has a future, although right now it is not economically feasible. Funding for research and development in this area should continue until it does become economically feasible.
We should also be doing much more research in nuclear fusion technology as I believe that will be the ultimate answer to our energy problems. In the meantime, we need to use what we have more efficiently.
There were no statements by top officials of the last 4 administrations including the US Military,NASA etc. that have anything but support for man made cause of climate change and all have suported moving in a direction to rectify it.
Richard A Clark, counter terrorist expert for both Clinton and Bush has stated that climate change is the greatest threat to mankind.
To continually deny these assertions puts you in the same camp as those who beleived the world was flat either because they lacked perspective and had no appreciation for science or are politically motivated to go along with ideas that are contrary to every candidate for president in recent history.
Like I said before…all I hear are CYA excuses…it ain’t happening, if it is, we didn’t do it. If we did, it wasn’t that much. It we did do a lot , there is nothing we can now do because it a) costs too much or b) disrupts my life. If you think that the national debt is a greater threat then climate change, ask the survivors in New Jersey how they are fairing.
dagosa, I never said that climate change wasn’t an threat to us. what I said is that it is happening and it will continue to happen, we cannot stop it, no matter how much it costs. The best we can do is minimize our contribution to accelerating the process. We should do what ever we can to reduce or eliminate our contribution to the process, but the process will continue until there is a natural cooling event. There are a couple of volcano’s in Iceland that show promise for providing that solution.
I just read an article, loaded with photographs, about the current state of the area that was Chernoble. I also recently watched a PBS special on the current state of Fukushima.
Hopefully, nobody will ever again consider a building a nuclear power plant as an alternative source of power. In the very, very short time that we’ve been using nuclear power we’ve already turned two huge areas of the earth’s land mass into something out of an old time science fiction/horror movie. And yes, it will inevitably happen again. It isn;t a question of “if”, only “when”.
Why is it that the same people that want to force us all to ride bicycles so often support nuclear power?
“we cannot stop it no matter how much it costs”
That’s still part of the CYA senereo. All science agree that prediction is nonspecific but it is so both ways. Science gives predictions in percentages. They all agree (at least the ones in the 95%) that dealing with climate change can initially slow down the effects. Can it totally reverse the effects ? There are tipping points that can’t be completely reversed, but, delaying the warming of ocean currents by even a degree or two over a period of time, can have huge benefits over what would be for generations if we did nothing. Remember, those who said that we couldn’t reverse the depletion of our ozone layer, we’re absolutely wrong too.
THEY ALL agree that the costs of doing something now is miniscule to the cost later as a result of doing nothing. When the budget for FEMA becomes greater then that for defense or so called, entitlements, maybe a few more will come on board.
Well Keith,why dont some of us lovers of tech and gearheads use solar and energy savings techniques as our hobby? and as a nice true benefit from our hobby will can get off the Grid and otherwise not suffer when a brownout or blackout occurs? People think nothing of spending thousands of dollars on old obselete pollution spewing old cars,then grimace if solar panels are double the rate of grid offered electricity,forgetting that a lot of the solar componets are a one time investment( its my home ,I only sleep there)-Kevin
TSM,simply because reasonable and safe forms of nuclear power do exist(the Navy has a pretty good track record-not perfect but pretty good) do a little searching on thorium reactors for instance-Kevin
People are more interested in image than practicality with their cars, homes, clothes and all else. In recent years the public has been sold the vision of the perfect home as being one with several wings and with steep, multi-gabled roofs that would be best suited to climates with heavy snow and ice. Here in the south such homes are all the rage among even those who think of themselves as environmentally friendly. Such homes are far more costly to build and re-roofing them costs 400% to 500% the cost of a “ranch” style home of equal square footage. It amazes me that the building styles best suited to the climate here is viewed so poorly by the public.
I agree @kmccune
I have always been in favor of local power generation. There are lots of townships and counties that could consolidate their energy requirements around a dam or wind power. Sending power hundreds of miles from one central generating station puts a lot of people at risk.
Honestly, are windmill an economical source of electric power? The politics of wind power has always seemed similar to the politics of military spending.
You had better believe they are. You hear a lot stories about their misplacement. But , it’s still a legitimate power source.
Hopefully, nobody will ever again consider a building a nuclear power plant as an alternative source of power.
Have you heard about Thorium??
If anyone is certain that wind mills are economically feasible they might explain to me how the alternating current from hundreds of independent dynamos can be synchronized. I have a working understanding of single phase, two phase and three phase current and for the life of me I cannot see how the system can operate efficiently enough to be a primary power source. Like the Direct Current from solar panels, wind power would seem to be dumped into the grid at the top and bottom of the sine wave to strengthen the current from a hydro-electric or nuclear power plant as a boost at peak demand only.