Global Warming, the Religion

[BigJon]

I was fascinated by the reports of Michael Crichton's latest novel which tries to debunk the global warming theories along with telling a story. I went looking for his other stuff and found these. They are all good with some repetition, but I really like Aliens Cause Global Warming from the Caltech Michelin Lecture - January 17, 2003
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/

BigJon

[barfle]

I posted a rather lengthy message a few months (or maybe it was hours, who can tell) back on my position on global warming, which was that yes, temperatures seem to be rising, but we really need to figure out the ramifications of taking drastic action against it.

The discussion is certainly not closed on the issue. The Cato Institute has something to say about it as well.

[analog]

Fascinating articles, both.

Asimov suggested thirty years ago that the northern hemisphere is perhaps in a slow natural oscillatory cycle involving the Arctic ocean. When that ocean is not frozen it is a tremendous source of wintertime atmospheric water vapor, which gets carried south by natural atmospheric flow and spead over the land as snow. Snow cover increases the reflectivity of earth, causing further cooling. Winters get colder and snow cover spreads south, until Arctic ocean freezes and evaporation stops. Then the cycle reverses because winter storms are milder, lacking water vapor from Arctic. That's the cycle we're in now, milder winters and warming as Arctic ocean ice recedes.

Will post a link if can find it.

Sounds plausible to me. And in the thirty years since Asimov's essay, our submarines report Arctic ice has thinned from ten feet to five or so.

Anyhow Chrichton's point about keeping science scientific is right on. It's not a new problem - Lavoisier addressed it in his Treatise on Chemistry, here's a link. Dont miss his diatribe from Condillac(4th from last paragraph)!

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/EA/LAVPREFann.HTML

[RC]

barfle on global warming
news today

This was interesting to see how we evolve.

[RC]

Wow, that Chrichton article in the primary post is really good.
Long, but good.

[barfle]

This link might get you closer to my post.

So, now that we have someone who claims definitive links between human activity and global warming, the question remains about what should be done about it.

My understanding of the Kyoto Protocol is that it won't make much difference, except adversely to the economies of the nations that follow it.

As I noted in the post above, global warming is happening, and a lot of people are in quite a tizzy over it, even though there is little if any science to tell us if it's a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly it will cause considerable changes. For example it's likely that Tuvalu will lose a large percentage of its useful land to a rising sea level (although they don't have much useful land to begin with). I'm not saying that won't be disruptive, partucularly to the Tuvalese, but I'm not seeing sudden mass extinctions like the dinosaur die-off from this.

What I believe that means is that we have time to determine several possible courses of action, courses that should be developed by scientists and researchers, not by politicians and diplomats. Their turn will come later, once real science is applied to the situation.

And we will wean ourselves from fossil fuels, once it makes economic sense.

[RC]

Well if you haven't read that first article, you should when you get a chance. He talks about how general consensus has nothing to do with science and makes a great point. Keep politics out of science.

According to the article, like "nuclear (new - clear not new-kew-ler ) winter" , global warming is being pushed for political reasons and I would be very susceptible to that if he's right. Great analogy.

AND, that is something that REALLY gets up my nose! Say what you mean for Pete's sake! I hate being manipulated.

Who are you supposed to believe?

It's like the old buyer beware adage - easy enough to say but unless it's your field of expertise, you end up going with blind faith.

I will close by saying that I still feel it is past time to get off the fossil fuel teat, global warming or no. The expense is greater than economics. No other excuse needed.

[barfle]

Originally posted by RC:
Well if you haven't read that first article, you should when you get a chance. He talks about how general consensus has nothing to do with science and makes a great point. Keep politics out of science.

I assume you mean the Crichton speech. I printed it out and will read it by Tuesday, for certain. However, politics is extremely pervasive in science these days. With a single notable exception, space exploration is conducted by governments. The large cyclotrons are being built with government grants. I can't say for sure how many university research projects are funded through government grants, but my guess is that it's well over half. And these are BECAUSE the scientists have sold their souls to the devil (I think you already know how I feel about most government projects).

Originally posted by RC:
According to the article, like "nuclear (new - clear not new-kew-ler ) winter" , global warming is being pushed for political reasons and I would be very susceptible to that if he's right. Great analogy.

AND, that is something that REALLY gets up my nose! Say what you mean for Pete's sake! I hate being manipulated.

I'll get back to you once I've read the speech. Why couldn't they let it have full width lines? It took 12 pages when it should have taken about 5.

Originally posted by RC:
I will close by saying that I still feel it is past time to get off the fossil fuel teat, global warming or no. The expense is greater than economics. No other excuse needed.

Amen to that.

[analog]

Thanks, guys.
I liked the speech so much I tried the book. It's an easy one evening read. Crichton gives raw data and references, wraps an entertaining tale around it.

From Barfle - "(I remember San Onofre was capable of a gigawatt back in the 1980s). "

To put a "gigawatt" in perspective -
to generate it you boil a swimming pool full of water into steam every twenty seconds and run it through a turbine. That's a BIG boiler... takes maybe 50,000 barrels of oil a day (two big barges full).

2&1/2 gigawatts is roughly the capacity of the American side of the Niagara Falls hydro generators.

A state like Florida will be using twenty or thirty gigawatts on a hot afternoon. There's just not enough big waterfalls to go around - Florida would need at least a dozen .

The latest GE windmills I saw advertised were around 1/300 of a gigawatt and they're HUGE! It would take 300 of them to make a gigawatt on a windy day. http://www.gepower.com/businesses/ge_wind_energy/en/index.htm

An average household needs a couple millionths of a gigawatt. A friend of mine recently spent a few thousand dollars for a "proof of principle" home solar electric system. It wont handle the air conditioning, but in mild weather he returns a small amount to the grid.
http://last-stand.org/HTML/articles/zero_energy_home_ukt_jun29.htm

I hope that helps.

<small>[ 02-19-2005, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: analog ]</small>

[BigJon]

Fred Singer is on fire this week.
http://www.sepp.org/weekwas/2005/Mar.%205.htm

BigJon