Global Warming

[spec]

I note that the rules for ETO don't preclude this subject, so here goes:

I must admit that I don't understand the global warming subject, for example on BBC TV yesterday a guest said that the current immigrant crisis and the terrorist bombings were caused by global warming. I have asked people from various walks of life about their views and the responses span from complete indifference thru scepticism to religious zeal. I would be interested in the views of ETO members because, having an engineering bent, they represent a focused strata of society.

 

[JimB]

I note that the rules for ETO don't preclude this subject, so here goes:

That is true, but these subjects can get out of hand quite quickly, when they do the thread will be closed.
Until then, go for it!

JimB

 

[spec]

Thanks Jim- I wonderd why the subject hasn't already been covered. I always stir things up but would not like to cause any ill feeling. If you think, on balance, it is unwise, please PM me.

Chuck

 

[Les Jones]

Hi Spec,
My view is that the source of the problem is that the world population is greater than the earth is capable of supporting with the amount of energy used per person to live the type of life we expect. (Cars, heated houses etc.) The only country that seems to be tackling the cause at the moment is China.

Les.

 

[granddad]

Good thread, in my opinion, population has to do what it can to limit energy use , plus recycling. Burning fossil fuels will one day have to stop, current I don't think CO2 levels are greatly influenced by 'man' plus I think methane is a bigger threat to GW . However ... a short story.
Wife has a small tin of sardines for her lunch, and as per local council instructions , she rinses tin with hot water , does not want a smelly tin in the kitchen, so takes it out to the back yard recycle bin, its freezing out there , but leaves the doors open for a few seconds ... energy saved ? The council take our recycling 100's of miles in massive trucks to Kent ( 3 per day ) to get it sorted . energy saved ?

 

[spec]

Hi Spec,
My view is that the source of the problem is that the world population is greater than the earth is capable of supporting with the amount of energy used per person to live the type of life we expect. (Cars, heated houses etc.) The only country that seems to be tackling the cause at the moment is China.

Les.

Hi Les,

That's a good outlook- ensuring that humans don't mess the world up. I remember in the 1950s returning from Singapore (father in RAF) and staying in a hotel in Birmingham- the smog was so bad that you couldn't go outside without choking. It was a real shock after the clear air where we had come from. I can also remember rivers choked with waste and beaches with raw sewerage spewing out over them. Due to the work of the environmentalists, that has, in the main, all changed. What worries me is that if you check some of the statements that are being made on the media about man-made global warming, they don't hold up. Also in the 1970s the worry then was global cooling.

 

[spec]

Good thread, ...

Hello grand,

Glad you think it is a good post. I was worried about starting it for the reason that JimB noted.

...in my opinion, population has to do what it can to limit energy use , plus recycling. Burning fossil fuels will one day have to stop, current I don't think CO2 levels are greatly influenced by 'man' plus I think methane is a bigger threat to GW .

This is the hub of the issue, I haven't been able to find if man's CO2 contribution is significant or not: that is by reading scientific books, not just listening to the conclusions on the media.

This demonising CO2, is an area that worries me in terms of global warming: CO2 is quite low on the scale compared to methane, as you say, and more so ,because of the volume, water vapour (clouds).

However ... a short story.

Wife has a small tin of sardines for her lunch, and as per local council instructions , she rinses tin with hot water , does not want a smelly tin in the kitchen, so takes it out to the back yard recycle bin, its freezing out there , but leaves the doors open for a few seconds ... energy saved ? The council take our recycling 100's of miles in massive trucks to Kent ( 3 per day ) to get it sorted . energy saved ?

So many stories like that- another area that confuses me.

 

[JimB]

Fossil fuels are by definition likely to be depleted one day.
In which case it makes sense to use those fuels sparingly and to use renewable alternatives where possible.

Whether there REALLY is such a thing as man made global warming, I am very sceptical. If I were a climate scientist I would be absolutely sure that mmgw was real in order to get my research money from to government.

As for the outpourings of the BBC, much of that is inspired by left wing media lovies who do not have a trace of technical/scientific knowledge or ability.

Further to granddads sardine can.
In the UK we recycle plastic bottles, in my case they get put into the blue topped wheelie bin along with paper and sardine cans. They are then hauled off every two weeks to be sorted and...???
In Germany, soft drinks bottles are made from a thick hard plastic, unlike the flimsy ones we have in the UK.
When you have guzzled your Coke in Deutschland, you can take back the thick plastic bottle and get 0.5Euro back.
Which is better, a one trip flimsy bottle, or a multi-trip rugged bottle?

JimB

 

[Musicmanager]

Morning Guys

Fossil fuels are by definition likely to be depleted one day

Oh I don't know Jim, there's still plenty of old fossils about !
<<<<<<<<<<<<< look here !

Whether there REALLY is such a thing as man made global warming, I am very sceptical. If I were a climate scientist I would be absolutely sure that mmgw was real in order to get my research money from to government.

As for the outpourings of the BBC, much of that is inspired by left wing media lovies who do not have a trace of technical/scientific knowledge or ability.

My thoughts entirely... ... when I started reading this thread I was thinking that I should avoid expressing my thoughts because they are generally scorned as 'head in the sand' and part of the mmgw problem .. .. .
I believe that time has shown that nature has a wonderful and quite impeccable way of recovering from whatever man does to it and that in the cycle of the existence of planet earth anything we do to encourage or combat global warming or global cooling will only endure if it is in line with that natural scheme.

When you have guzzled your Coke in Deutschland, you can take back the thick plastic bottle and get 0.5Euro back.
Which is better, a one trip flimsy bottle, or a multi-trip rugged bottle?

I'm sure we all remember when we used to do that with milk bottles here .. .. .. what was the reason we stopped ?? Was it jobs for the boys, by any chance ?

S

 

[JimB]

I'm sure we all remember when we used to do that with milk bottles here .. .. .. what was the reason we stopped ??

Exactly the same principle.
We probably stopped because it was "cheaper" to use flimsy one trip plastic bottles.
But as with many things, that which has the lowest up-front cost is not necessarily the cheapest or best solution in the long term.

JimB

 

[spec]

Fossil fuels are by definition likely to be depleted one day.
In which case it makes sense to use those fuels sparingly and to use renewable alternatives where possible.

I have the opposite view in practical terms- hope you don't mind. Rightly or wrongly, this is what I think:

There is so much fossil fuel in the world that it is surprising that the first time man lit a fire the whole place didn't go up in flames.

Are fossile fuels going to run out? Aren't they being made continuously by dying trees sea life etc.

In the very long term everything comes to an end, certainly the earth when the sun runs low on fusehable material and expands- perhaps in 500m years the world will be too hot for any life, let alone human life, certainly in 1b years (hope I have got the figures right but the principle still holds if not].

Whether there REALLY is such a thing as man made global warming, I am very sceptical.

Me too, but I can't get at the facts- there are so many variables and no base data to form a reliable opinion.

If I were a climate scientist I would be absolutely sure that mmgw was real in order to get my research money from to government.

You have hit the nail on the head here- there is a big incentive to support global warming and no incentive for the opposite. In bygone days non-believers would have been burnt at the stake... if it wasn't for the adverse effects on the environment that is.

Not just climate scientists but MPs, convention attendees, climate consultants ...

Also the ordinary climate change crusaders get plenty of self-satisfaction and accolade from 'saving the planet'.

The other thing is that it is a big subject for selling newspapers and attracting TV audiences.

Apparently, Margarete Thatcher engineered a lot of this with a scare campaign in the UK to sell nuclear power to the voters, which at the time was a big no no, due to the various misshaps with nuclear power plants.

As for the outpourings of the BBC, much of that is inspired by left wing media lovies who do not have a trace of technical/scientific knowledge or ability.

Well put. Anyone can be a good guy by saying the right thing at the right time... double spending on NHS, police, defence, education. Increse income suppoort and other benifits ... but who pays!

'who do not have a trace of technical knowledge or ability' The problem is anyone can say anything and when they are proved to be completely wrong there is no come-back. Besides which, scientists are not trusted and they don't know all the answere- there is more to life than what scientist deal with: the supernatural, faith healing, tarot cards, horrescopes.

Further to granddads sardine can.
In the UK we recycle plastic bottles, in my case they get put into the blue topped wheelie bin along with paper and sardine cans. They are then hauled off every two weeks to be sorted and...???
In Germany, soft drinks bottles are made from a thick hard plastic, unlike the flimsy ones we have in the UK.
When you have guzzled your Coke in Deutschland, you can take back the thick plastic bottle and get 0.5Euro back.
Which is better, a one trip flimsy bottle, or a multi-trip rugged bottle?

Good idea- at one time in the UK, you could get refunds on empty bottles- I had quite an income when I was a nipper.

Chuck

 

[spec]

Morning Guys

Oh I don't know Jim, there's still plenty of old fossils about !
<<<<<<<<<<<<< look here ! ...

 

[Nikolai Petrenko]

In Vietnam this is the first time 35,5°C in the winter

 

[spec]

In Vietnam this is the first time 35,5°C in the winter

Hello Nikolai- we meet again.

I take it that 35.5C is hot for winter in Vietnam.

One of the basic tenants about the climate is that you can't draw conclusions from a single event or even fron a short time event. The world is a huge integrator, especially the sea, and things change very slowly, much longer than 1 year or even 10 years. When you say first time- is that since Vietnam was first formed by plate tectonics or since records first began.

I heard a thing on TV the other day that said it's been the hottest summer in so and so place 'since records began'- big worry, so I checked: records began in 1981. And they didn't mention on the news that the previous three years had been the coldest 'since records began'.

Also, weather is not predictable however convincing the weather men seem- how can it be? Have you heard about the butterfly effect? It says that, because of chaos theory, if a butterfly flaps it's wings in Australia it could cause bad weather in England.

Have you ever noticed how inaccurate the weather forecasts are? Where I live on the south west coast of England, we have predominately westerly winds and the weather forecasts are deadly accurate.. for a day. Why: because the weather radars and other sensors pick up the weather situation- clouds, temperature, barometric pressure, wind- say 240 miles away over the Atlantic. The wind speed is 10 miles per hour. You can do the sums. However if the wind changes, which it naturally does, even the 24 hour forecast goes to pieces. Any forecast further forward- forget it. These are the same people who are forecasting global temperatures 20 and 50 years ahead, which is conveniently far off that there are no consequences if they are wrong.

I used to have a load of global warming books from 20 years ago, and not only has the hockey stick graph, which was the only evidence the IPCC had, been proven to be a fabrication and has now been withdrawn, but the forecasts are way off too., around +2 deg C by 2015: actual increase, according to the the latest IPCC claims, 0.7 degrees.

All this stuff about sea level rise is also tenuous. First thing is how do you measure sea level. They talk about inches but waves are orders higher, not to mention tides which in this area are 22 feet, or thereabouts. I have a text book which says it is impossible to accurately gauge sea level- what is the reference point? The sea-level claims fly in the face of facts it seems.

*What gets me hot under the collar is that it's obvious that the weather has been changed by the firing of the big guns on the Western Front in the First World War, and after that by letting off atom bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Why can't people see that!

* just in case- not serious

 

[granddad]

Someone mentioned 'Coke' where do they get the CO2 from ? .... and the billion similar drinks like them consumed globally every day, if governments were serious , surely that could be a target to reduce emissions ?? Or is it just about green taxes...

 

[Musicmanager]

Someone mentioned 'Coke' where do they get the CO2 from ? .... and the billion similar drinks like them consumed globally every day, if governments were serious , surely that could be a target to reduce emissions ?? Or is it just about green taxes...

The problem with that theory is the 'emission' is generally methane ..

 

[spec]

Someone mentioned 'Coke' where do they get the CO2 from ? .... and the billion similar drinks like them consumed globally every day, if governments were serious , surely that could be a target to reduce emissions ?? Or is it just about green taxes...

green taxes

 

[Nikolai Petrenko]

So I choose class AB is good, save many power. As an electronic hobbyist, I say we will powered a lot of circuit in the future with solar or wind power, and replace normal fuels with electric and solar power.
Lev Tolstoy said: "A man thing change the world, he must change himself"
I wish all people in this forum would do anything we can to save the world-our home.

 

[cowboybob]

Source: **broken link removed**

Anyone see a pattern? Solar, perhaps? Anyway, notable peaks (and valleys) that certainly preclude human influence. Or, to my way of thinking, pre-"Chicken Little" would be experts, politicians and media enablers... .

 

[spec]

So I choose class AB is good, save many power. As an electronic hobbyist, I say we will powered a lot of circuit in the future with solar or wind power, and replace normal fuels with electric and solar power.
Lev Tolstoy said: "A man thing change the world, he must change himself"
I wish all people in this forum would do anything we can to save the world-our home.

Nikolia, it's all a matter of proportion. Just to give you a clue the solar constant is 1Kw meter squared. That means with no cloud all the time the sun is shining for every 1 sguare meter 1Kw is being pumped into the earth's atmospher, in fact it is more than that, but 1Kw is close enough. just work out the surface area of half the globe and see how much it works out to be.

The odd 10W... 500W you may use does not even register on the dial. Sure it increases your electricity bill though, but that is another subject which, no doubt, we will cover in this thread.

The other thing is that the sun's miranda varies. At the time of the moon missions, for example, it was lower than it is now. I have never seen a plot by the IPCC of global temerature against the sun's miranda though. You sound worried. Don't be. The planet has been hotter and colder than it now.

The world is not a comfy stable thing like you might think by looking at it from your house widow. Give you a clue- the word even looks flat from that view.

Actually the world is a spinning lump of radioactive bubling molten iron. And the earth that we stand on is no thicker than an onion skin if viewed from a distance. The earth's surface is not even stable. It is constantly moving under the influence of sub terrainian forces and also by the gravitational attraction of the sun and moon- just like the sea.

Don't worry my friend, they are just trying to scare you.