Author Topic: Global Warming mini-rant  (Read 27006 times)

biobill

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #45 on: October 31, 2006, 12:14:25 AM »
rpg52
  An interesting book that addresses your concerns is "The Long Emergency". Can't recall the authors name. Well researched IMHO though a bit negative. I have more faith in human resourcefulness.         Bill
« Last Edit: October 31, 2006, 01:04:43 AM by biobill »
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Procrustes

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #46 on: October 31, 2006, 12:37:17 AM »
rpg22
  An interesting book that addresses your concerns is "The Long Emergency". Can't recall the authors name. Well researched IMHO though a bit negative. I have more faith in human resourcefulness.         Bill

That would be James Howard Kunstler of Clusterfuck Nation fame: http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/ .  He's a bit apocalyptic IMO.  We should however recall what George Carlin said about drivers: "Anyone who drives slower than me is an idiot, and anyone who drives faster is an asshole."  Anyone more cynical than me is apocalyptic, and anyone less cynical is an idiot.

[edited for spelling]
« Last Edit: October 31, 2006, 02:25:51 AM by Procrustes »

mobile_bob

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #47 on: October 31, 2006, 02:19:18 AM »
Been gone for the last several days due to my mothers severe illness, but am now back only to find out my best friends wife has been taken to mayo (sp) clinic, and it don't look good.

Pro Quote
"Earth is not necessarily able to absorb any changes imposed by humans.  Look as Easter Island.  Pollen records show that it was once a lush, wooded place, whereas now it is treeless and barren.  The usual question is, who chopped down the last tree?"

you are certainly correct in that we as human's can mess up area's or regions of the planet, as evidenced by chernobyl, threemile island, the nile delta, and easter island as well, but..

we are also able to adapt and to change the ecoclimate in regions not previously habitable to man.

certainly islands are far easier to screw up than the whole planet, some islands are very delicate indeed

but in general the whole planet will scrub itself of man one day (at least the majority of man) only to have man repopulate her again and in doing so, do quite well.

it is all in cycles, which will go on for a virtual eternity, the come and they go, and man has little he can do about it one way or another, short of massive neuclear detonation.

every thing else we do will be scrubbed up in very short order, as evidenced by massive vocanic eruptions, as i have stated before krakatoa spewed out more in one erruption than all of man since the dawn of the industrial age to date. the good old earth cleaned that problem up in a few short albeit cold years, remember too that the eruption took place in ~.001% of the time we have been polluting!

even if we stopped polluting at all, who is to say when the next volcano does the deed anyway, maybe two or three in short order!

no way to control that, mother earth cannot control those events either, just as adolesents cannot control zits.

am i saying we should pay no mind and pollute as we wish, hell no.. but i don't think we should be anal about it either at least on a world scale, regionally delicate area's yes, globally no!

anyway it is fun to be back and see that there is another topic to argue other than concrete vs resilient mounts :)

bob g
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Procrustes

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #48 on: October 31, 2006, 07:02:50 AM »
Been gone for the last several days due to my mothers severe illness, but am now back only to find out my best friends wife has been taken to mayo (sp) clinic, and it don't look good.

Sorry to hear that Bob.

it is fun to be back and see that there is another topic to argue other than concrete vs resilient mounts :)

The Marines have this to say about engaging the A-10 Warthog: you'll both get dirty but the Hog loves it.  I'm going to slink away from this one with my tail between my legs.

Welcome back Bob.  If you're desperate to expend some of your copious energy, you still haven't told us about the blacksmith.  Also why did you choose to settle in Kansas of all places?  Nothing against Kansas, but I've never heard tell of someone retiring there.

mobile_bob

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #49 on: October 31, 2006, 07:23:31 AM »
Pro:

why retire to kansas?  been asked that more than once :) maybe twice,,,,, ok,,  few dozen times!

1. i have family there

2. land is cheap there

3. property tax is not extreme at least yet

4. no building inspectors, at least not yet

5. not much in the way of building code or enforcement

6. open highways, one can actually get places in a reasonable length of time

7. reasonable growing season,

8. relatively cold winters, makes for good ice production

9. not many epa folks around

10. low population density

11. basically the only place that seemed to make sense, where i can build a house to my standards, power it the way i want to, have it paid for, no mortgage, and be left alone.

downside

1. bugs, wasps, bee's , spiders and snakes, mosquitoes and other less than welcome guests

2. nothing much going on, have to drive 30 to 60 miles to go to a movie or some other cultural event

3. hot summers, cold winters

4. stickers, sand burs, cokle burs, nettles and other things that want to stab ya.

5. poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac seem to do well there

6. lots of wind

7. cool thunderstorms, tornadoes, and other things that go puff in the night

8. low population, means less medical, dental and other types of service one might need

9. fewer people with less to do, means everyone is likely to know everything about everyone, nosey folks

10. closest town, pop 600 has been dieing a horrible death for 30 plus years


damn when i put it into print, i dunno why i want to move to kansas  :)

bob g
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Doug

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #50 on: November 01, 2006, 03:07:29 AM »
Binnie said Moon scape to discribe my home town and he's right it was....
But polution controls can work. The last few years we've had some drier than normal summer here and this has brought back some of the sins of the past in the ofrm of acidity levels rising again because nt enough rain is there to wash out the soil. The nickel dust is with us forever, just look at Port Colburn and the soil contaminiation there and around the old Mond Smelter in Coniston still nothing grows after 36 years since the facility was closed and torn down....

There is no more INCO, or Falconbridge....

Our new masters are a shell company called Xtratta ( tell us Dave what are do you think of the your Swiss overlords ? ) controlled by a shadowy company called Glencore. They Own what was Falco/Noranda...
And CVRD a Brazilian Iron ore company, no longer owned by the brazilian gov but obviously influenced and to some extent still in controll.

What interest do these people have in the enviroment?
Not that it matters, I'm off topic and unhappy about now being a servent in my own home....

We sold off the most important minerla resource in the west for 40 Billion my god as a country we are stupid?
Would the Russian's sell Norilsk for 80 Billion 100 ? HELL NO they might need to control that material some day or at the very least keep the profits from it at home...

Doug

Doug 

SCOTT

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant.......The ocean is cooling
« Reply #51 on: November 08, 2006, 03:28:38 PM »
The Ocean is cooling….The ocean is cooling

I came across the link below in a note about the implications of global warming in a financial context, specifically with respect to large insurance and re-insurance companies. The original piece contained text from the paper linked below.   This is just one of the many studies available and I believe that not any one study can be seen as conclusive, rather the body of evidence as a whole must be considered. 

http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

interesting

Best regards
Scott
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cujet

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #52 on: November 09, 2006, 08:02:16 PM »
I feel sorry for the folks on the planet Mars. They are having trouble with the (largely CO2 based) polar ice caps melting. It seems they are melting at exactly the same rate as ours.

Chris

P.S. All those diesel engines here on Earth are causing the problem on Mars. Especially the ones made in the third world countries, as they do not meet current CO2 output guidelines. Oh, wait, yes they do. In fact, the compliant engines make EVEN MORE CO2.

People who count on their fingers should maintain a discreet silence

mobile_bob

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #53 on: November 09, 2006, 10:49:03 PM »
millions if not billions have been made on the theory of "create the crisis, provide the solution"

now mars is in trouble, and i'll be darned if i can figure how to make a dime on it.

but somebody will!

bob g
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Quinnf

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #54 on: November 10, 2006, 02:22:12 AM »
Bob,

Let me help you out here.  You write a couple of papers summarizing the evidence for shrinking Martian ice caps, citing a dozen or so colleagues' and friends' prior work, and submit them for publication.  Literature summaries are easy to get published because they provide an easily mined source of references for others in your field to use in their work.  They also provide "fill" in journals during slow times, which fact the editors won't ever admit.

Then at your society's next regional meeting, present a poster summarizing your ideas and research into the phenomenon.  Be sure to cite others' contributions to your work.  Include grad students, interns, colleagues, any highly placed mentors you may have worked with as well as the department head, especially if he(she) has name recognition.

As you start getting feedback from others, indicate that you're writing a grant and will be exploring the phenomenon further in the future, and suggest that they might be interested in collaborating with your team.  While writing the grant proposal, make sure to use painfully understated language, but leave no room for anyone to doubt you are researching the contributing factors to a potential catastrophe that if ignored, might prove highly embarrassing to the funding institution, should it ever come to light that they refused to fund your study. 

Case in point of understatesmanship:  after the Challenger disaster of 1986, NASA and Thiokol engineers on the inquiry panel complained they couldn't see how to test the idea that cold temperatures might have made rubber gaskets of the Challenger's rocket boosters stiff. Physicist Richard Feynmann, as cool and understated as they come, calmly dipped a sample of the gasket material into a glass of ice water.  When the engineers had dug themselves a really deep hole, Feynmann remarked that while everyone else had been speaking, he had been conducting a simple experiment with a sample of the supposed defective seal by immersing it in his glass of ice water, and, much to his surprise (yeah, right) the elastomer was now as hard as stone.  His final remark, "I think that this might have some bearing on the question at hand,"  stands as a classic example of extreme understatesmanship.  Individuals capable of such verbal restraint are highly regarded in academic circles.

Sign on like minded colleagues and submit the grant proposal to your organization's committee.  If they like it, they'll approve it with their institution's blessings and off it goes to whatever funding group you have targeted.  For the sake of brevity, let's assume the grant is approved and funded.  As time goes by, if no obvious cause for the melting of the Martian ice fields presents itself, begin exploring some "what-ifs."  What if there is some reason for the melting that might be caused by some new phenomenon that hadn't been considered before, saaaaay, electromagnetic radiation from a nearby planet, saaaaay, the Earth.  Yeah.  Earth is crawiling with those horrible unnatural two-legged critters that are using so much energy to power their despicable Bourgeois lifestyle it MUST have an effect on nearby planets.  And even if the effect isn't real, it would be a good thing if some pressure could be brought to bear to limit those creatures' activities.  Furthermore, proving the effect might take years, and provide tillable soil for growing many more grants. 

So you gather some evidence that such a thing might possibly happen, such as stratospheric heating during periods of high solar energy flux on earth, then extrapolate that to Mars, and indicate that the electromagnetic radiation from all the electrical infrastructure on earth might perturb the almost nonexistent Martian magnetosphere and you've got a good place to start.

Obviously a rather clumsily composed parody of a scenario, but it's not too far off from the way the system really works.

Quinn




« Last Edit: November 10, 2006, 03:06:38 AM by Quinnf »
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mobile_bob

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #55 on: November 10, 2006, 07:47:36 AM »
Quinn:

if it wasn't so sad it would be funny!

you are right in that is how the system seems to work


my theory is all those solar panels here on earth are reflecting the suns rays back onto mars and melting the icecaps, or ...
it is all those new shiney 20 inch wheels with spinners reflecting the suns rays back to mars.
hey its my theory and i am sticking to it... :)

bob g
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Doug

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Re: Global Warming mini-rant
« Reply #56 on: November 13, 2006, 03:51:19 AM »
Since we are on the topic of global warming and polution I thought I would post this.
Its just common sence that you clean up your act when you can where you can. Now that the Russian ecconomy is running like a tiger and Russian inudstry has more money than they've ever seen....
Background Norilsk.
Siberian city of 300,000 ( Frozen Shite hole 9 months of the year )
Sudbury, Canada's great cold war rival and primary mining and metalugical site for Soviet Nickel and PMGs needed for war production.
Soviet doctrin at the time of its construction was production at all cost.
Average life expectasncy for a Norlisk miner pre 1990 was 55 years.
Technology Soviet developed furnace technology a lot like INCO flash system with a revolutionary cont feed converter but with no emmisions controls the main concern was productivity.

You need to remember the context of this kind of change. Norlisk was a ring of sulphur stained snow in the 70's as seen from a space, a closed city built by Stallins prisoners.

Norilsk Nickel to have spent over 1 billion euros on resolving environmental issues by 2015


9 November 2006

SKRIN Newswire

Copyright 2006. SKRIN. All rights reserved.


Norilsk Nickel released an open letter to the Director of the Blacksmith Institute, Mr Richard Fuller. "We have read, with great interest, the report published by the Blacksmith Institute concerning the most polluted cities in the world, which mentions the city of Norilsk, and we cannot help but express our fundamental disagreement with a number of the conclusions you have reached and the comments you have made. We are moved to do this by our desire to defend the reputation of the Mining and Metallurgical Company Norilsk Nickel from tendentious assertions and by our respect for the people who live in Norilsk and have a genuine love of the city. At the same time, we would like to take the opportunity to inform you of Norilsk Nickel's environmental activities, as the information referred to in the report is seriously out of date. This, we feel, is necessary in order to present an objective picture instead of the "horror story" that you mention with regard to Norilsk.


As you may be aware, a number of problems of the Russian industry have been the result and the heritage of the soviet approach to industrial activity, when the majority of large-scale industrial enterprises were the central focus of populated areas, and the industrial facilities themselves were located within the city boundaries. More often than not, such facilities were constructed without any concern for environmental protection. In those days the slogan was "Production at any cost!" Today, the largest Russian corporations, such as Norilsk Nickel, are guided by international standards in the area of ecology, and are investing very heavily in making serious improvements to their performance regarding the environment. In fact, by 2015, Norilsk Nickel will have spent over 1 billion Euros on resolving environmental issues, which we expect to result in a significant improvement in the environmental situation. The achievement of such results demands time and very large amounts of money, since this is, first and foremost, connected with the replacement of existing technology and the reconstruction of production facilities. Noticeable improvements have been made in the course of the last 10 years, including a 25 per cent reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions (our main industrial waste) per tonne of production. Independent monitoring has already shown examples of the regeneration of nature in the areas in which we operate. In your commentary on the report, you also speak of "no pollution control". We trust you will see that this is untrue. The company's environmental management system is certified in accordance with ISO 14001:2004. Norilsk Nickel keeps a very close watch on atmospheric conditions within the city boundaries, and if limits are exceeded then emissions are reduced by reducing the scale of operation in the smelting facilities. Besides, Norilsk Nickel also conducts special health - promotion programmes and rest and recuperation at sanatoria and resorts. In 2005 around 30 per cent of workers and members of their families were able to take advantage of subsidised stays at such facilities. The average leave for a citizen of Norilsk is between 60 and 90 days. We pay particular attention to the monitoring and maintenance of the health of children, who undergo a three-month course of rest and recuperation at sanatoria and resorts every year. Our observations show that this has led to an improvement in children's health. We have no doubt as to the need for a report of this kind being prepared, but believe that it is wrong that it should contain such sensationalism. Facts and figures concerning the levels of pollution in the Russian cities that the report mentions are freely available and have been reported frequently in the Russian media. The improvement of environmental conditions is something to pay attention to on a continuous basis. Was the preparation of this report stimulated by genuine concerns about the state of the environment and people's health, or were there other motives at work? If your aim was to attract attention, then you have achieved that aim - you are now known in Russia. If your aim was to create a "horror story", then you have done even better. The recipe is a well-known one - just paint everything in dark colours. Nevertheless, I do appreciate your report for another opportunity to inform about our work on improving the environmental situation in Norilsk city. Should you genuinely wish to obtain full and objective information concerning Norilsk Nickel's activities with regard to the environment you are welcome