Which gas contributes the most to the "greenhouse effect"? (Alphabetical order)

There was a big Brittish study published a couple of months ago saying the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases in the world were cows.

Beano sales should skyrocket, buy your stock early. :)

There was a big Brittish study published a couple of months ago saying the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases in the world were cows.

Beano sales should skyrocket, buy your stock early. :)

I sometimes wonder about the people who write these articles. Are they deliberately being misleading or are they just totally ignorant. The same applies to people who claim that forests produce the oxygen we need and remove carbon dioxide from the air.

What do cows feed on? Grass.

How does grass grow? It uses sunlight, water, carbon dioxide and a few minerals to make carbohydrate, a little bit of protein and releases oxygen in the process. This is how all plants grow.

So when a cow eats grass it is eating carbon dioxide that has been removed from the atmosphere by the grass as it grew.

So when a cow releases greenhouse gases it is just putting back what has been removed.

Cows are not a net producer of greenhouse gases. Provided the cow stays alive and has not decomposed away it is a NET remover of greenhouse gases. Only when the cow expires and rots away is the carbon dioxide it was responsible for removing finally released back into the atmosphere; and at that point the NET contribution of the cow is ZERO

In fact all living creatures are NET removers of CO2 for their individual metabolic requirements; so long as they are alive. Then when they die and rot away all they do is put back what they briefly used. Humans fall into a unique category because by burning fossil fuels we are releasing back into the environment CO2 that was removed by plants millions of years ago.

The idea that we need trees to produce the oxygen we need is idiotic; the oxygen we need is produced by growing the plants that we eat. It doesn't make any difference whether we eat the plants directly or whether they are first turned into meat by living animals; food is essential to use trees are not.

In reality mature intact forests whether they are along the Amazon River or anywhere else in the world are completely neutral with regards to carbon dioxide removal and oxygen production. In a mature forest the death and decay of plant mass matches the rate of growth. When a mature forest is logged there is a net release of CO2 but like the dead cow this is only what it had removed in the first place.

Planting a tree does initiate net removal of CO2, very slowly. And it is also possible to figure out a 'barrels of oil equivalency'. On a dry weight basis wood contains about as much carbon as petroleum oil. "About as much" means it is within a factor of two. So the 'dry weight' of the annual growth of a tree is about equal to the weight of petroleum oil that tree has compensated for. Obviously a little sapling an inch or so in diameter is only going to compensate for a few pints of gasoline consumption. In a hundred years time when the tree that was planted as a result of your carbon offset credit is fifty feet high and two or three feet in diameter it may have accounted for a few hundred gallons; and most of that CO2 removal will have taken place during the last fifty years of the hundred not the first.

I think the biggest cause of the "greenhouse" effect and global warming is all the hot air (or is it hot CO2?) that the "humans are destroying the world!" crowd are blowing where my sun don't shine.

i think it must be cigarette smoke , the way people react to it these days is to the extreme,

so now i smoke twice as much just to piss em off

Geof,

I have been trying to think up an argument for what you have said and it finally dawned on me, and the answer was so simple.

You argument is based on conservation of matter, one of the most fundamental laws of physics. And as far as your argument goes it is correct. The earth has a finite amount of carbon and thus a fixed amount of carbon dioxide. This amount hasn’t changed appreciably in 4.7 billion years and still isn’t changing. And it does get constantly recycled from one form to another as you pointed out.

However, taking a large amount of carbon, and turning it into CO2, as with the burning of fossil fuels, which is then dumped into the atmosphere, puts an unusually large amount in a place where it doesn’t belong all at one time. As you pointed out it will eventually get recycled out. However, there is still more than the normal amount in the atmosphere.

Let’s take Aristotle’s argument that a stone sinks in water because it is made of earth and it’s proper place is with other things made of earth and extend it to the human body. You (all of us actually) are approximately 98% water. Having 98% of the stuff in your blood vessels being water is a good thing. The water is where it’s supposed to be. Now lets put 98% water into your lungs, not a pleasant experience (having fallen off a dock as a child before I learned to swim I can vouch that it is not pleasant). There has to be some moisture in the lungs for them to work properly, but nowhere near 98%. Likewise, the excessive CO2 in the atmosphere could be detrimental. Or it could be part of a natural warming cycle.

I’m still in the camp that says we don’t have enough information to tell how much global warming is due to the natural cycle and how much is due to the extra stuff we have caused to be in the air, but there is no harm in being careful about it. The extremists on one side say we are (or have already) pushing the planet past the point where it can recycle and recover. Extremists on the other side say there is no such thing a global warning.

So, just to be safe, I think we should round up all the cows we can get our hands on and have one heck of a CNCzone barbeque.

Steven; I guess by quoting your post I gave the impression I was commenting on or criticising something you had expressed; this was not my intent...the focus of my comments was the British Study saying cows were greenhouse gas producers. This is nonsense and that is what I was getting at.

Life on Earth is carbon based; that is a fact.

For land based life all the carbon that makes up their tissues has been obtained by fixing atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. For most water based life this is also the case but it is Carbon Dioxide that has dissolved into water and some of this comes from carbonates in rocks so it is not absolutely correct to make the same general statement as for land based life.

Therefore all life removes the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere by virtue of its very existence. This Carbon Dioxide stays removed until the lifeform dies and decays...there is no net effect.

Cows cannot be the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases; the claim is patently absurd.

I was not expressing any opinion on whether Global Warming is or is not occurring or what the cause is if it is occurring. I was stating that there is a lot of rubbish and misconception about the production or removal of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.

For completeness I had to include the statement that humans in using fossil fuels are releasing back into the atmosphere Carbon Dioxide that was removed by living organisms a long time ago.

Geof,

I was just pointing out that you were right in 98% of your argument (probably closer to 100% right). I didn't take the quote personally at all. Your argument is very solid and it took me a few days to figure out a counterargument around it.

Physicists fall into 2 groups. Those who rely exclusively on the mathematics behind what they’re doing, and those of us who are not as good mathematically, who go into the philosophy of what it all means. Sometimes I’ll argue a point to see it this old brain can still think like it did in grad school. You always put together solid points and it’s always great to see if I can counter them. Sometimes I disappoint myself (like this last post which I’ll admit is a flimsy argument based on Aristotle’s 2500 year old argument… but it’s all I could think of). When I see a “scientific” study like the British one I figure I can quote it until is is disproved, no matter now absurd it may sound on face value.

For me, arguing like this is my version of chess or warcraft. And I hate to admit it, but you may be better at this type of argument than I am. There is an old saying “use it, or loose it”. Your probably single handedly doing more to keep me from going senile than anything else I’m doing.

I don't mean to pick on any one in particular, especially the survey writer but:

To me, this survey is all to typical of how the media is handling the "Global Warming" issue. Lets vote on the reason - Let popular opinion decide the matter.

How about objectively looking at the data and I mean all of the data that is available and come up with sound conclusions. Perhaps I am asking too much.

My opinion is that the data does show the climate is warming slightly, but we don't understand enough about the causes to be sure it is human caused. I haven't seen enough data to even say it is likely caused by human activity.

I ate waaaaaaaay to many beans last night.
It's my fault, sorry guys.
Seriously though, everything boils down to two things, money, and power.
Who stands to profit from this whole global warming discussion?
Al Gore and others stands to make a fortune.
Big oil stands to loose a fortune "along with George and Cheney"
We are gonna pay either way.
This whole cows causing global warming garbage is one of the stupidist things
I've ever heard. There used to be millions upon millions of buffalo
roaming the prarie before any white man stepped foot on this continent.
I believe global warming does exist, it's been slowly warming since
the last ice age.
BTW, this was one bitter cold winter, thank god for global warming.
we might have froze to death.
thank you for reading my rambelings.
never could write.

BTW, this was one bitter cold winter, thank god for global warming.
we might have froze to death.

Typical of anyone living in the cold countries to make a statement like this. Think about those living in the hot countries. Imagine if the north gets to be as hot as the equator (May or may not happen) where will the people go to live comfortably?

Typical of anyone living in the cold countries to make a statement like this. Think about those living in the hot countries. Imagine if the north gets to be as hot as the equator (May or may not happen) where will the people go to live comfortably?

DUDE!!!!!!!
I live in Missouri, far from the north country.
you might thank your lucky stars you didn't freeze to death in the
1970's,,,,,, or did you forget we were supposed to have another
ice age.

never, under any circumstances, underestimate the power of the media.
WAKE UP ALEXCCMEISTER!!!!! IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY!!!!
YOU MY FRIEND HAVE SUCCOMMED TO PROPOGANDA!!!!!

don't let the media think for you, dig a little for the truth.

da riverrat

At a previous job we were sticking 15 gallons of trichloro- trifluoro ethylene intot he atmosphere every day... and there was no need for it. Now THAT'S a greenhouse gas and a half.

we were sticking 15 gallons of trichloro- trifluoro ethylene intot he atmosphere every day... .

Under the 'Cap N Trade' program you could have paid me $12 per day and I would have promised not to dump 15 gallons of trichloro- trifluoro ethylene into the atmosphere every day...

You would have been guilt-free, I would have been $12/day richer, and the world would have been the same. Just like the real carbon cap and trade system.

Before anyone thinks I'm being stupid (which is really a different topic anyway..), that is exactly what the chinese are doing this very moment by taking money under the cap and trade scam to close dirty coal plants....that they were going to close anyway.

I have to say that so far I'm impressed by the poll results...

9 people think that CO2, which represents .038% of the atmosphere, is the most significant greenhouse gas.

14 people think that H2O, which represents between .3 and 3% of the atmosphere, is the most significant greenhouse gas.

Me? I voted for H2O, 'cause I think it'll take the series. Unless of course CO2 comes from behind and starts forming clouds, in which case all bets are off.

I have to say that so far I'm impressed by the poll results...

9 people think that CO2, which represents .038% of the atmosphere, is the most significant greenhouse gas.

14 people think that H2O, which represents between .3 and 3% of the atmosphere, is the most significant greenhouse gas.

Me? I voted for H2O, 'cause I think it'll take the series. Unless of course CO2 comes from behind and starts forming clouds, in which case all bets are off.

I think the point I wanted to make is emerging and becoming clear.:)

the Chinese and Indians are dumping tons of crap into the air every day with no regard to "cap and trade" or any kind of international treaties. And their economies are growing rapidly which means their polution volume is also growing rapidly.

In Central America, the Hondouras Mahogony is a prized species of tree. So much so that a lumber company, locating a large one, may clear a logging road several miles into the forest to get to it. After they get the tree the locals move in and have a slash and burn party where they deforest areas on both sides of the logging road to set up small subsistance farms. Once the land is pretty much used up and no longer farmable, they follow the logging truck to the next Hondo tree. So what do we do. Educate them as to the follies of their ways... probably won't do much. Tell then the gods of the forest will be ticked off at them and give then gout... probably won't work for long. The only real thing that will work is to let them screw up enough land the hopefully learn from the folly of their ways before they screw up to much.

Young, formerly third world, beginning industrial countries are kind of like this where it comes to polution. Of course, older more established industrialized economies also make polution too. I'm not laying i all on the Chinese.

One more true story.

Anaconda Copper. Herad of them.. probably not, dissapeared in the early '70's you say. They used to be an American company. Smelting Copper and creating all kinds of really nasty copper byproducts that were highly toxic. So much so that there was a defoliated ring around their main plant, a zone of death to be dramatic. The feds imposed strict regulations on them to control this problem. Where are they now? Out of bussiness? Heck no! Their now a Mexican company with no polution controls.

....Anaconda Copper. Herad of them.. probably not, dissapeared in the early '70's you say. They used to be an American company. Smelting Copper and creating all kinds of really nasty copper byproducts that were highly toxic.....

Yes I have heard of Anaconda. I think they were the ones that left us in BC with a wonderful situation when they abandoned Brittania Mine on Howe Sound.

But I this post is a plea for elucidation from fizzisist.

I found this:

http://www.umich.edu/~gs265/society/greenhouse.htm

Which had the following:

The "greenhouse effect" is the heating of the Earth due to the presence of greenhouse gases. It is named this way because of a similar effect produced by the glass panes of a greenhouse. Shorter-wavelength solar radiation from the sun passes through Earth's atmosphere, then is absorbed by the surface of the Earth, causing it to warm. Part of the absorbed energy is then reradiated back to the atmosphere as long wave infared radiation. Little of this long wave radiation escapes back into space; the radiation cannot pass through the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The greenhouse gases selectively transmit the infared waves, trapping some and allowing some to pass through into space. The greenhouse gases absorb these waves and reemits the waves downward, causing the lower atmosphere to warm.(www.eb.com:180)

I put in the bolding; tell me how do the gases know which way is down and how do they reemit only in that direction?

This was there also:

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is a colorless, odorless non-flammable gas and is the most prominent Greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere

Are you having difficulty breathing? You should in an atmosphere with no water vapor.

And this:

Carbon Dioxide is emitted into the air as humans exhale, burn fossil fuels for energy, and deforest the planet. Every year humans add over 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by these processes,

I guess either we eat fossil fuels or import food from outer space. I can't think how we have any net effect as humans, can you?

Last one:

Fossil Fuels were created chiefly by the decay of plants from millions of years ago

If the plants decayed, i.e. were metabolized by bacteria, etc, into H2O and CO2, where did the carbon in the fossil fuels come from?

I always thought the .edu indicated an educational institution but I didn't know things had degenerated that far.

China and India are going at a rate that will blow past us by 2009-2010 in CO2 emissions and other pollutants...assuming they aren't ALREADY puking other pollutants an order of magnitude more than us....

Check out pics of smog in China...
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=chinese+smog&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2

EDIT....
"A NASA-funded study found some climate models might be overestimating the amount of water vapor entering the atmosphere as the Earth warms. Since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, some climate forecasts may be overestimating future temperature increases...."
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0315humidity.html

Geof,
You want me to explain what specifically? The principles of wavelength bandpass/absorbtion for gasses and vapors, or statements made by UMich which are in error? They've got a great weather URL, and a very good lawschool...but that don't mean they're right all the time, and I'm not responsible for what they say or do.

On the matter of cows causing greenhouse gases. Unless they are in a feedlot most cows eat grass. Do away with all the cows and then what happens to the grass?. Also a lot of the pasture land is not suitable for growing any cultivated crop. So cows are harvesting grass produced by sunlight and turning it into some useful i.e. human food. BTW Cave paintings go back what? 30,000 years. Ever see a cave painting showing someone hunting for vegetables?

..Geof,
You want me to explain what specifically? ..

Nothing really. I just find it amusing and annoying that mistakes and mis-statements occur in things like that link. When someone is writing on a controversial topic any mistakes can give a dissenter a seemingly valid arguement to say the writer is wrong. The reemitting waves downwards is something I have seen for years; the emission is non-directional, it goes up as well and sideways and every which ways.

It is that very reason I generally prefer to offer a link to the paper itself when possible, and I try to keep the quotes in context...which I don't always do.
Yes, on occasion I get pissy and don't include quotes or data that can cast a shadow, but for the most part, I'm real careful to not provide ammo for the other side.

With all the media focus on global warming and the comments that the debate is over, it is fabulously amusing to see scientific programs covering non-climate topics where they say that the debate...such as with origins of dinosaurs and their history.....needs to continue for the science to progress.

Yup. It sure does.

....Yes, on occasion I get pissy.....

Whats your definition of occasion :) ? I can guess at 'pissy'.

Does anybody else get irritated by the use of "tons of CO2".
If you don't know what I mean, how much helium is in a ton of helium?
At least they should say metric ton, which is a unit of mass and not weight.

Cows are not a net producer of greenhouse gases.


The people who made fart jokes about cows producing so much greenhouse gas understand it, "... the big British study published a couple of months ago saying the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases in the world were cows" said it was about methane released in farts and burps, not CO2 .

I guess a gram of methane traps as much heat as 25 grams of CO2 .

It was a United Nations report titled "Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars." http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment

And sdantonio's joke about beano is true, see "Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet"
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2040615,00.html

Does anybody else get irritated by the use of "tons of CO2".
If you don't know what I mean, how much helium is in a ton of helium?
At least they should say metric ton, which is a unit of mass and not weight.

Are you suggesting CO2 does not have any weight?

The people who made fart jokes about cows producing so much greenhouse gas understand it, "... the big British study published a couple of months ago saying the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases in the world were cows" said it was about methane released in farts and burps, not CO2 .

I guess a gram of methane traps as much heat as 25 grams of CO2 .

It was a United Nations report titled "Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars." http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20772&Cr=global&Cr1=environment

And sdantonio's joke about beano is true, see "Pill stops cow burps and helps save the planet"
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2040615,00.html

During their growth cows, like all living things, sequester Carbon in their body tissues. In the case of humans the Carbon used to make their tissues is equivalent to about 50Kg of CO2. Cows are heavier by about 8 to 10fold but made out of basically the same material so a cow will have sequestered the Carbon from up to 500kg of Carbon Dioxide. So taking your 25 to 1 ratio as being correct a cow will have to produce 20kg of methane before it has a net effect. That is before the methane it has produced has a greater effect than the CO2 it has removed. In addition the residence time of methan in the atmosphere is around 12 years so it is being constantly removed.

Are you suggesting CO2 does not have any weight?

No.
Certainly dry ice has weight.
About 28.3 grams of it weighs an ounce,
but 28.3 grams of CO2 at 1 atmosphere and at 25 degrees Celsius
weighs about .33 ounces.

During their growth cows, like all living things, sequester Carbon in their body tissues. In the case of humans the Carbon used to make their tissues is equivalent to about 50Kg of CO2. Cows are heavier by about 8 to 10fold but made out of basically the same material so a cow will have sequestered the Carbon from up to 500kg of Carbon Dioxide. So taking your 25 to 1 ratio as being correct a cow will have to produce 20kg of methane before it has a net effect. That is before the methane it has produced has a greater effect than the CO2 it has removed. In addition the residence time of methan in the atmosphere is around 12 years so it is being constantly removed.

I'm not going argue the validity of the UN report, but when I heard it I did think that methane molecules in the atmosphere must fairly quickly burn into water and CO2 . We certainly know that it's not a stable molecule.

But why would we really care about how much CO2 a cow sequesters? From cow inception until the time we crap them out and exhale their sequestered CO2 can't be much more than 5 years.
I guess the CO2 sequestered in their skin stays locked up for quite a long time. How much leather do you get from a cow?

No.
Certainly dry ice has weight.
About 28.3 grams of it weighs an ounce,
but 28.3 grams of CO2 at 1 atmosphere and at 25 degrees Celsius
weighs about .33 ounces.

28.3 grams of anything weighs an ounce; that is the conversion between metric and imperial measure. Technically not correct because it should be phrased as gram force or some silly unit like that.

More technically correct is; something with a mass of 28.3 grams has a weight of 1 ounce.

But I cannot see how you can claim that 28.3 grams of a substance has a different weight depending on whether it is in the solid or vapor phase.

Possibly what you have done is taken into account the bouyant force of the rest of the atmosphere. I suppose if you took 28.3 grams of CO2 and used it to fill a balloon the apparent weight would be something like .33 ounce.

But this is akin to saying that a ship in drydock weights more than a ship
afloat.

From your other post But why would we really care about how much CO2 a cow sequesters? From cow inception until the time we crap them out and exhale their sequestered CO2 can't be much more than 5 years.

This is more or less what I am getting at. The cow grows by eating grass or grain, or ground up other cows if you are not worried about BSE. The grass or grain contains carbohydrate which was made by the plant using CO2 from the atmosphere. Every Carbon atom in the cow came from a CO2 molecule sequestered from the atmosphere. When the cow is slaughtered and eaten, etc the Carbon atoms go back to being in Carbon Dioxide again. The cows existence has no NET effect on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

To say that cows are the biggest greenhouse gas producers is nonsensical. Agriculture because it consumes fossil fuel to operate machinery etc is a significant NET producer of CO2. The plants and animals have no net effect.

It does not matter to me where a report originates; hocus pocus is hocus pocus.

I will not argue the fact that the Earth is warming up. The point of fact is it has been for centuries. There are drawings on rocks, deep inside the Sahara desert of animals native to the grass lands and other more airable areas. The questions is that the Earth is warming much faster then past estimates can account for. What is causing the rapid rate of warming? The only answer so far has been attributed to human activities, i.e. industrial activites. But the problem is that there is some, though minor, doubt if that is the only cause. I have recently heard that the other planets of our solar system are also warming up. Why? I have also read in a news release from NASA that one scientist believes the sun will shortly enter a extremely active solar cycle. More so then has been recorded. Is the sun partly the cause? Is there other causes that have not been examined yet? Personnelly I reserve my final views for now. Though, if one episod of the PBS series NOVA is correct, we are so very screwed. Read the trascript of Dimming the Sun
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3310_sun.html

I do feal that the humans have had a major impact on the planet. More often then not, for the worse. How many species have gone extinct, or on the verge? How severely has the general enviroment been contaminated over the years? I used to love fishing, and later eating my catch. Now these days there are warnings about our fish being contaminated with various toxins.

To often, the only thing that motivates humans is greed for wealth and/or power. Rarely looking down the road to see what will come at the end because of what was done today out of greed.

28.3 grams of anything weighs an ounce; that is the conversion between metric and imperial measure. Technically not correct because it should be phrased as gram force or some silly unit like that.


What does 28.3 grams of helium weigh?
what does 28.3 grams of helium weigh on the moon?
An ounce?
I guess you have a different definition of weight than I do, but you do get what I'm saying.

What does 28.3 grams of helium weigh?
what does 28.3 grams of helium weigh on the moon?
An ounce?
I guess you have a different definition of weight than I do, but you do get what I'm saying.

I live on the earth not on the moon. Yes of course on the moon the weight is different. On earth the weight of something is the gravitational attraction for that something; same any place else. But you were differentiating between solid CO2 and gaseous CO2. Most times when you weight something it is not necessary to correct for the bouyant effect but when weighing a quantity of gas that is necessary. That is what you overlook with your .33 ounce result.

The cows existence has no NET effect on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

To say that cows are the biggest greenhouse gas producers is nonsensical. Agriculture because it consumes fossil fuel to operate machinery etc is a significant NET producer of CO2. The plants and animals have no net effect.

It does not matter to me where a report originates; hocus pocus is hocus pocus.

My original post was to point out that the report blamed methane produced by cows, not CO2.
Your calculation of the net CO2 produced has nothing to do with it.

Most times when you weight something it is not necessary to correct for the bouyant effect but when weighing a quantity of gas that is necessary. That is what you overlook with your .33 ounce result.

I guess we have different definitions of weight.

Dear Geof,

Sulphur Hexafluouride...very bad greenhouse gas? Well, maybe....but let's get it into perspective.

One way of measuring the air change rate in buildings ( or indeed any other enclosure) is to inject a known volume of tracer gas and then detect the rate at which the tracer decays as it is diluted by ventilation air from outside. If the ventilation rate is constant, the tracer gas concentration will fall away exponentially, and the ventilation rate can be calculated.

Obviously, the tracer gas should have a high concentration within the test enclosure , initially, compared to its concentration in the outside atmosphere. Otherwise, you will not measure the decay accurately.

Now, a while ago, a certain Mr Lovelock invented an "electron capture device"
that can detect extremely small concentrations of gasses. I have one, and it is incorporated into a gas chromatograph. The gizmo is tuned to detect sulphur-hexafluoride so that we can detect tracer gas concentrations for measuring building ventilation rates by the method mentioned above.

If we inject SF6 into the enclosure at an initial concentration greater than 50 parts per 10^9 (50 parts per billion), the detector is overloaded and we have to go through a painful purge proceedure. We try to avoid this.

The gizmo is quite capable of reliably reading SF6 concentrations well below 0.5 parts per billion during a tracer decay experiment within a building, and "flat-lines" far below that level.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (say) 350 parts per million

Atmospheric sulphur-hexafluoride (say) below 0.1 parts per billion

Looks like SF6 must be really wicked unless I've missed something. (Probably have!)

Best wishes

Martin

My original post was to point out that the report blamed methane produced by cows, not CO2.
Your calculation of the net CO2 produced has nothing to do with it.

Right, I was adopting a technique used by a lot of people when discussing conflicting points. Focus on something which, in-and-of-itself, is correct but which may not be pertinent to the specific topic under discussion.

And I wonder if it could be validly claimed that the people who go on about methane from cows are using the same technique. Is the methane allegedly released by cows relevant to Global Warming? Is it a new thing, has it been increasing or is it part of the background level that has been there all along. Methane is scavenged from the atmosphere fairly quickly so if bovines have been belching for a long time their contribution has reached a static level. Simply measuring the output at one point in time doesn't really mean much.

...Sulphur Hexafluouride...Martin

Sounds horrible. How come it doesn't just sit and sulk on the floor? It must be quite heavy.

I assume the Lovelock you refer to is the Gaia man. So you are helping make him even richer. :)

Sounds horrible. How come it doesn't just sit and sulk on the floor? It must be quite heavy.

I assume the Lovelock you refer to is the Gaia man. So you are helping make him even richer. :)

Dear Geof,

Yes, it is indeed the very same Mr Lovelock. I suppose there is a certain irony there.

SF6 is heavier than air, but I think it still stays well mixed within a space because the concentration is so low compared to the other gases (random walk or something). We did an experiment in a completely sealed enclosure (an oil barrel) and sampled for a day. There was no sulking.

Best wishes

Martin

...SF6 is heavier than air, but I think it still stays well mixed within a space because the concentration is so low compared to the other gases (random walk or something)....

Doesn't Mr Brown have some responsibility here?

Doesn't Mr Brown have some responsibility here?

Dear Geof,

Yikes! It's been many a long year since I last heard anybody mention Brownian Motion. It all comes flooding back...( unreliably )

Best wishes

Martin

Dear Geof,

Yikes! It's been many a long year since I last heard anybody mention Brownian Motion. It all comes flooding back...( unreliably )

Best wishes

Martin

Obviously you are not past it.......yet. :)

13 people so far have voted for CO2 as the most important gas..vs. 21 for H20

I'm more and more amazed with each vote that those 13 people aren't paying ANY attention.....Of course, how could you expect NASA to have any credibility (the same outfit that employs James Hansen....note the irony in that one!!)

".... Since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, some climate forecasts may be overestimating future temperature increases...."
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/...5humidity.html

Hmmmmm......H20 is typically between .3-3% of our atmosphere, and makes CLOUDS which both cool and trap heat....while C02 is .038%....

Sorry...didn't mean to change the subject. We use SF6 here as an insulating gas for switches and spark gaps, among other things. So far no penguins have perished.

(I inhale virtual SF6 online to lower my voice. It makes me sound sexier on AOL....I do it here sometimes when I need to sound more authoritative.)

....and makes CLOUDS which both cool and trap heat....

Which do which? If you will excuse the poor grammar :) . Tis a serious question; I thought low level caused cooling and high, maybe very high could cause heating. However, recently I read something which suggested high level causes cooling. So am I back asswards?

Cirrus clouds, which form between 30,000-60,000ft can both heat and cool, depending on thickness, altitude, and ice crystal size. Its generally considered that they trap heat though, by reflecting IR that is coming back up from earth.

So, the general idea is that high altitude clouds trap heat, and low altitude clouds reflect. Problem is, we really don't understand enough to quantify what's going on, so general circulation models (GCM) are terrible at giving us a good view of climate influences.

CloudSat and CALIPSO are gathering data on cirrus clouds, and should be giving us some interesting stuff soon...since they've been up for a year now??

Ice crystal formation and clouds are a HUGE unknown in climate science, and that's one reason I have a hard time swallowing the CO2 argument all by itself.

Here's CloudSat's homepage....just one of many links on clouds..
http://cloudsat.atmos.colostate.edu/home

Thank you. So I am not entirely upside down; high heating, low cooling to a first approximation. So are aircraft contrails high clouds? They cause heating? When they are not being used for dispersing mind altering drugs :) ?

The 'huge unknown' bit I was more or less aware of. One article I read explained that clouds were left out of some of the models the AGW crowd use because they didn't understand what the clouds did so they ignored them.

Dear climate change dudes,

SF6 is rated at about 22,000 times worse than C02 as a "greenhouse gas"

.http://www.earthfuture.com/stormyweather/greenhouse/


Could be true, but I'm always sceptical about those climate experts. They get bread on the table for "advising" politicians who are, frankly, completely out of their depth on any issues of a technical nature. The politicians, poor dears that they are, probably studied law at university and have no idea at all of the science. A lucky few may actually be able to change a light bulb.

They easily fall victim to the "experts". Not entirely surprising given that shed-loads of money come the "experts" way to report some crisis that only the politicians can legislate against, and incidentally, about which they have zero understanding ,and then attempt to take the credit for . It is a strange kind of symbiotic circle. The more jaundiced might call it (hmm) "playing" with each other.

OK, the rant ends here. How about science?

Atmospheric CO2 concentration about 350 parts per million

Atmospheric SF6 concentration less than 0.1 parts per billion ( could well be a lot less , but I can't measure below that level myself).

If my calculator is working, that suggests that there is a worst case of SF6 molecules being out-numbered by a factor of at least 3.5 million by CO2 molecules in the existing atmosphere. Even if the SF6/CO2 "badness ratio" of 22,000, SF6 is a pigmy.

Then there is the problem of H2O ( bad stuff} ...cows breaking wind.. pine trees giving off methane and all the rest.

You have to have a good laugh...

Best wishes

Martin

...pine trees giving off methane...

I thought it was terpenes.

Thank you. So I am not entirely upside down; high heating, low cooling to a first approximation. So are aircraft contrails high clouds? They cause heating? When they are not being used for dispersing mind altering drugs :) ?

The 'huge unknown' bit I was more or less aware of. One article I read explained that clouds were left out of some of the models the AGW crowd use because they didn't understand what the clouds did so they ignored them.

Contrails, so far as I've heard, tend to cool...which could offset some of the heating effect of the net exhaust components. The major exception being the jets used by AlGore, since they have Zero net effect on climage because he pays himself with carbon credits.

Odd, isn't it, that we don't hear much from the AGW crowd about the effects of depositing the exhaust gasses WAY up in the atmosphere??? Of course we won't hear much from 'em, because THEY like to enjoy the comfort, convenience, and speed of jet travel.

Contrails, so far as I've heard, tend to cool..AGW crowd...like to enjoy the comfort, convenience, and speed of jet travel...

Comfort, convenience and speed have nothing to do with it. They are making a gallant sacrifice for the sake of the planet. You state: "(Jet exhaust} contrails...tend to cool."

Which makes me feel very virtuous about an upcoming trip to Budapest.

I thought it was terpenes.

Dear Geof,

You are almost certainly right. Alas, it almost certainly won't be the last time I parade my stupidity in public.

Anyway, I had a closer inspection of the web link in post #47.

It says the atmospheric concentration of SF6 is about 5 parts per trillion, that it is growing at about 6% per year, and that it is 22,000 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.

I had assumed that the background level of SF6 was about 20 times greater.

If you believe their figures, it's going to quite some time for SF6 to make any difference to global warming. It's not a pigmy....... it a pigmy of a pigmy of a pigmy....(etc).

Ah, then there's that problem with H2O.

Best wishes


Martin

We probably ought to be careful about pointing out the inconvenient facts about water vapor.

Why? Because next the environ mentalists will be wanting to tax and regulate your water usage!

You could probably enslave people just as well by throttling their water as you could by throttling their energy. Think about it. Oh, wait, they're already busy on that front!

--97T--

Anyway, I had a closer inspection of the web link in post #47.
Ah, then there's that problem with H2O.


I had a closer look at that link too...and I'm not terribly impressed. One can be easily mislead by the numbers....or lack of...

Notice that there is NO value for radiative forcing for water, which makes up (typically) between .3 to 3% of our atmosphere. There's a radiative value for something that constitutes POINT ZERO THREE EIGHT PERCENT (that's .038% ), but not for something that's an order of magnitude or 2 more???

The reason is simple, of course, it is because we don't know. We do know it is a lot, but it varies, it varies a LOT, and we don't know the net sign. Does that mean we can leave it out of the equation. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

That is one of the many reasons that the gcm's don't work.

The residence time of H2O is estimated to be around 43 days....and to use IPCC tolerances, make that +/- 21 days. (my value)

..... because we don't know. We do know it is a lot, but it varies, it varies a LOT, and we don't know the net sign. Does that mean we can leave it out of the equation. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!.....

Oh dear, you will never make a good scientist. Of course you leave it out; how are you going to make the model fit your preconceived notions if you don't?

Did you just call him Dear?

Hehe.

--97T--

It's ok...we're on pretty good terms at the moment.. :)

Oh dear, you will never make a good scientist. Of course you leave it out; how are you going to make the model fit your preconceived notions if you don't?

TONIGHT ON CNN'S Headline News!!
http://www.glennbeck.com/tv/climate/globalwarmingsppt1.pdf

Did you just call him Dear?

Hehe.

--97T--

No, lower case 'd'.

"....Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect...."

For those of you who voted for CO2, you're in disagreement with even the IPCC. Really. Honest. That's where I got the quote!!

The IPCC says that H2O is #1. Numero Uno. El Primero. Ichiban.

So there ya have it. The IPCC says it's water vapor, the AGW deniers say it's water vapor. Even Eric Cartman says it's water vapor.

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_FAQs.pdf

The IPCC says that H2O is #1. Numero Uno. El Primero. Ichiban.

]


Dear fizzissist,

Presumably boiling water for a cup of coffee is now regarded as a greater global crime that releasing the carbon dioxide in my cans of lager......?

The IPCC is suggesting that the responsible global citizen should go all out to hoard the beer?

Yikes!


Best wishes

Martin

Dear fizzissist,

Presumably boiling water for a cup of coffee is now regarded as a greater global crime that releasing the carbon dioxide in my cans of lager......?

The IPCC is suggesting that the responsible global citizen should go all out to hoard the beer?

Yikes!


Best wishes

Martin

Of course!! Coffee drinking is a multiple sin; first you encourage destruction of Tropical Rain Forests...the LUNGS OF THE PLANET!!!!, then you contribute to GLOBAL WARMING by emitting CO2 and water vapor while boiling your water and to cap it off your coffee grounds contribute to the solid waste problem.

You should feel ashamed of yourself(chair)

Of course!! Coffee drinking is a multiple sin; first you encourage destruction of Tropical Rain Forests...the LUNGS OF THE PLANET!!!!, then you contribute to GLOBAL WARMING by emitting CO2 and water vapor while boiling your water and to cap it off your coffee grounds contribute to the solid waste problem.

You should feel ashamed of yourself(chair)


Dear Geof,

Not wishing to get down to a personal level, but didn't you mention, somewhere hereabouts, that you were a herbivore?????


What about your , (ahem), methane contribution.......?

Best wishes,

Martin

Dear Geof,

Not wishing to get down to a personal level, but didn't you mention, somewhere hereabouts, that you were a herbivore?????


What about your , (ahem), methane contribution.......?

Best wishes,

Martin

I am, as you say, a herbivore...actually an omnivore because I only eschew beef and chicken. However, I am not a ruminant having only one stomach.

I believe beef and chicken should be well-chewed too.

--97T--
Sorry, couldn't resist.

I am, as you say, a herbivore...actually an omnivore because I only eschew beef and chicken. However, I am not a ruminant having only one stomach.

Dear Geof,

I do not doubt that your "carbon footprint" is pigmy-sized compared to mine.

I boil coffee, open cans of beer, and ruminate......

S: (v) chew over, think over, meditate, ponder, excogitate, contemplate, muse, reflect, mull, mull over, ruminate, speculate

Triple whammy for the planet.. we are, indeed, all utterly doomed.

Best wishes

Martin

I boil coffee, open cans of beer, and ruminate......

S: (v) chew over, think over, meditate, ponder, excogitate, contemplate, muse, reflect, mull, mull over, ruminate, speculate.....Martin

I suppose if you ruminate you must be a ruminant.

Courtesy of dictionary. com and other sources:

eschew \es-CHOO\, transitive verb:
To shun; to avoid (as something wrong or distasteful).

ru·mi·nate (rū'mə-nāt')

v., -nat·ed, -nat·ing, -nates.

v.intr.
To turn a matter over and over in the mind.
To chew cud.
v.tr.
To reflect on over and over again.

ru·mi·nant (rū'mə-nənt)
n.
Any of various hoofed, even-toed, usually horned mammals of the suborder Ruminantia, such as cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and giraffes, characteristically having a stomach divided into four compartments and chewing a cud consisting of regurgitated, partially digested food.

adj.
Characterized by the chewing of cud.
Of or belonging to the Ruminantia.
Meditative; contemplative.

I suppose if you ruminate you must be a ruminant.

.

Dear Geof,

I just "came out of the pasture" in my last post. It's taken years to summon up the courage.

Best wishes

Martin

"Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone"

Lettse now, all this planets life forms depend on H2O raining down from clouds,
but NOT raining CO2, Methane, nitrous oxide, or ozone clouds!

Pres

....Lettse now, all this planets life forms depend on H2O raining down from clouds,
but NOT raining CO2, Methane, nitrous oxide, or ozone clouds!

Pres

Most life depends on CO2 as much as H20.

Lettse now, all this planets life forms depend on H2O raining down from clouds,
but NOT raining CO2, Methane, nitrous oxide, or ozone clouds!



All chlorophyll containing plants convert CO2 into carbohydrates (food) and oxygen when exposed to light and water.
Both carbohydrates and oxygen are required for animal (human) life. Without CO2, plants cannot grow; without plants,
animals cannot survive.

Animal life and fossil fuel combustion give off CO2 and water to feed the plants.

By this definition of the cycle of life you must consider water a pollutant if CO2 is a pollutant. Clearly water is not a pollutant,
and neither is CO2.

Just because CO is toxic does not make CO2 a pollutant. Carbon and nitrogen are the building blocks of protein,
but CN is a deadly toxin.

Don’t confuse the attributes of different compounds containing similar elements.

The antidote to this confusion:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022478442170&q=global


http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=label%3A%22global%20warming%20swindle%22

.....Animal life and fossil fuel combustion give off CO2 and water to feed the plants....

I put in the bold on your "...and fossil fuel combustion..." because including that in the whole sentence is not correct.

Fossil fuel combustion releases CO2 that was utilized by plants millions of years ago but which were neither consumed by animals nor bacteria or other decay processes. The CO2 released from the combustion of fossil fuels is over and above the CO2 participating in the CO2 cycle in the current biosphere; it is not necessary to maintain the current CO2 cycle.

This is one of the three points of this highly contentious issue:

Human activity in using fossil fuel is releasing extra CO2 into the atmosphere; that is undeniable.

The Globe is warming, that is obvious from retreat of glaciers worldwide, reduction in Arctic ice cover, changes in timing of plant germination in spring and a host of other observations; Global Warming is undeniable.

The third point is the one that may be deniable, some people vehemently claim it is deniable and others equally strongly claim it is an absolute fact that the increased levels of CO2 are causing the warming.

Only time will tell which side is correct.

There are other points: The Human-generated-CO2-is-responsible side claim that the warming will cause worldwide catastrophe and we must act now to prevent this. Their solution is to seriously curb CO2 emission or more popularly it seems, pay someone who says they will do this, and carry on in their own merry way.

Siginificant real reduction in CO2 will create a worldwide economic recession or depression almost instantly; fossil fuel combustion and economic acitivity are inseparable. However, if the CO2 is responsible for the warming it will continue without change for several decade after the start of any reductions in CO2 emission.

So if the CO2-is-the-culprit people are correct there are two choices:

Drastically cut fossil fuel use, wreck the world economy and go into a future of catastrophe with a chaotic economic system.

Recognize that climate change is going to have many adverse effects and go into them with a functioning economy which can respond to the changes in a rational manner.

Fossil fuel combustion releases CO2 that was utilized by plants millions of years ago...
.

That CO2 was in the air long ago before it became part of the plants; then it was locked into the earth as coal or oil. By burning the coal or oil we are simply putting the CO2 back where it came from; the atmosphere.

My main point is that CO2 is not a pollutant, but part of the carbon cycle essential to life. I was not suggesting that we rely on CO2 from fossil fuel combustion to feed plants, but that it doesn't hurt.

Hey guys, just like people green houses gases are not created equal. While there is alot more CO2 in the atmosphere than methane and it's overall effect is much greater, the the methane is about 25 times as potent pound for pound. I don't have the numbers but cattle and other grass eaters produce a lot more methane than you might think. Other sources of methane could be much more significant in the not too distant future as huge ammounts are currently being released from lakes in tundra areas that are thawing out for the first time in thousands of years

Cattle contribute an estimated 12% of the atmospheric methane.

"Eat a steak, drown a Tuvalu."

I always get amused at the "it must be human caused global warming because it has never changed so fast before" crowd. They act like an increase of one degree a century is some kind of astronomical abnormal record.

But they totally overlook the fact that world wide temps DECREASED almost 6C in one century about 600 years ago kicking off the "little ice age". They still don't know what caused the temps to drop so rapidly then and the still have no idea what is causing them to rise now. There "logic" appears to work something like this:

1) Temps are increasing faster than I have ever seen in MY lifetime!
2) There are more people than ever before and
3) These people are releasing more C02 in the atmosphere than before, SO

4) People MUST be causing global warming because of the CO2 increase!!! Panic!!! Scream!!! Run to the hills!!!! Pass a law that will destroy the economy but make me rich!!!!

I had to laugh my butt off at a scientist on a program about lighting. All in all, the program was very interesting. But the best quote was "We still don't understand lightening. According to the laws of physics AS WE KNOW THEM air to ground lightening SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. But at every thunderstorm any idiot with eyes can go out and PROVE that the "laws of physics as they know them" are blatantly WRONG! And yet these same scientist are perfectly willing to go out and say they KNOW that humans are "destroying the earth" with all our activities (well, some of them are at any rate).

This discussion reminds me of the line my undergrad chemistry professor used on fellows with strident positions "the only students worse than uneducated ones are the half educated ones".

There are more chemical reactions taking place on the head of a pin, than you can comprehend, so lets not get carried away with the world guys.

If someone here can simply tell me why basic photo synthesis works. Not how but why. Or how is it that plant trophisms such as gravity or sun direction cause plant cells to project one direction in favor of another. If you cannot explain how the simplest monocot can grow one mm, then maybe this worldly discussion about co2 is a bit proud.

By the way, if someone buried the dead cow, she would go anarobic and create sulfur compounds that smell a lot like some of comments in this thread, and carbon monoxide and methane. If methane using H forms a perfect tetrahedron with carbon, symetrical and all, then it is considered very stable, saturated. Saturated with all of the Cs and total reduction of Hs from the carbohydrates.

See when the discussion goes beyond the aroma of HS hydrogen sulfide, the pH drops below 2 and the next derivative is CH4, that's right, the whole damn thing blows up.

Remember the hallway walls of the Matrix movie, made of 10 to the 23 green bits and bytes. If you could see the chemcial reactions taking place around your personal environment, it would look like that. But they would not be static or linear. Equilibriums would be the norm, atoms, ions, molecules in constant flux. All being pushed and pulled to form more co here, then more co2 there.

Did someone in this forum say the world is changing, YOU BET, and you think your going to do something planet wide about it? THEN IVE WASTED MY TIME HERE TONIGHT.
gh

Glory hallalulu brothers! the world is finally getting warm so that the traumatic conditions of the past ice ages are a thing of the past.

All the pseudo scientists quoting spurious reams of data that taken as a whole, amount to nothing, and the sum total of all your data quotes just adds up to the conclusion that NO-ONE really knows what is happening or is going to happen.

NO-ONE can predict the future weather patterns, a most studied topic that has so many variables, that by the time you reach any conclusion that would indicate that the day is going to start out cool and end up cool with sunny patches in between, it is over.

The theme is the most important greenhouse gas.
This would have to be water vapour in the atmosphere.
Without it there would be no rain, which is the most efficient way to distribute water known to man.

You can forget about ALL the latest figures on green house gasses.
No one is doing ANYTHING to limit or control them.
The USA is not putting pressure on China or India to limit their inhouse activities that so say CONTRIBUTE to the global warming.

Far from it, these third world countries are rapidly overtaking the world economies, and as they become dominant in commerce, just as the Victorians did 100 years ago, it is we who will stand in their shadow and marvel at their achievments, as they gobble up the raw materials that go to make the products that in the past made us rich at their expense.

The important fact that escapes most people is that the global warming is benign, whereas if it was a global cooling it would be a disaster.
The last thing the globe wants is a cooling pattern with ice sheets covering the northern hemisphere.

We forget that in the past with ice age situations, the populations were thinly spread, with nomadic hunter gatherers prowling the planet, unlike the present day with cultivated food crops, populations bursting at the seams, and food production being manipulated genetically to increase the yield per hectare as never before.

Be warned, if there was a recurrence of an ice age, even if it was of miniscule proportions, in the Northern hemisphere, you would get a mass migration of billions of people to the Southern Hemisphere that has not got the capability to support it.
You could forget about ecological values in the fight for survival.

We exist on a very narrow band of temperature regions.
Take for example a region that has a Mediteranean climate with summer temps of 30 deg C and winters of 10 deg C.

All the food crops that are suited to this region are numerous, but the region is small.
Compare this to a region that has a winter that drops to 4 deg C for 6 months of the year and a Summer that barely gets to 15 deg C, probably suited for rice production but not for large scale grain crops like wheat and oats etc.

Then compare the rest of the areas that have winters that drop to -10 deg C and summers that rarely exceed 10 deg C and are mostly overcast with thick cloud cover all the time, and you will soon realise that food crops won't grow out of a narrow band of temperatures.

The global warming is not an issue when there is no warmth.

It is not even an issue if the seas rise and the shorelines of low areas are inundated, compared to the catastrophe that would occur if the seas fell by a metre and the land was covered in a deep blanket of snow and ice.

At the end of the day, despite all the wars spewing noxious fumes from all the ordinance fired without a thought to the health of mankind, and all the volcanic activity producing more poisonous gasses than we could ever produce, the presence of certain fluctuating quantities of CO2 pales into insignificence when we consider that the population growth is the real producer of pollution.

China will not significantly reduce it's population levels, for to do so would deny it the opportunity to dominate the world by sheer manpower alone, and the other bustling populatons like India, Africa, the USA and South America are in the same boat, for to reduce their numbers would put them in a minority group status on the world stage.

At this moment in time, anywhere in the world, the pressure is to provide sufficient quantities of clean water so that you can wash the car each week and hose your driveways down, without the worry that the rains in winter won't fill the dams for the Summer months and water restrictions will ensue.

My opinion is that H2O is the most important greenhouse gas.
Ian.

....At this moment in time, anywhere in the world, the pressure is to provide sufficient quantities of clean water so that you can wash the car each week and hose your driveways down, without the worry that the rains in winter won't fill the dams for the Summer months and water restrictions will ensue.

My opinion is that H2O is the most important greenhouse gas.
Ian.

Well done Mr Handlewanker; remarkably well done for a misplace Limey-come-Ozzie:D.

And I suppose I should relent and be a little serious for once; putting smart aleck comments aside your dissertation is among, if not, the best I have seen on the Global Warming/Climate Change topic. Your only error is right at the end; here on the coast of British Columbia having enough rain in the winter is something we do not need to worry about and it is inconceivable that we ever will.

Hi Geof, "a misplaced Limey"? I left Blighty in 1948 and spent 20 years in South Africa, back to Blighty for 7 years then on to Oz since 1981, so that makes me a rolling stone by anybody's imagination.

I don't suppose you could send a container load of water to OZ seeing as it's coming out of your ears and you lot don't know what to do with it?
Perhaps you could redirect an iceberg and send it to us, it's been proposed by serious thinking people.
Our dams in Melbourne are on the 40% full mark, and so we don't get to pee every day.

They've got the same situation in South Africa, and when I was there last in 2005 they had a phrase to suit the situation, "if it's yellow let it mellow, but if it's brown flush it down".

The whole problem is not with the lack of water but with water distribution.
There's plenty of water about but too much in one quarter and not enough elsewhere.
If I remember rightly San Francisco is watered by the building of a canal some years back to bring water from the mountains, without which the city would not exist.

I blame the politicians, for it's them that have the power of attorney to act on our behalf, and they have the means to create the infrastructure to supply water where it's needed.

Perhaps a little less money spent on making war paraphenalia that soon get obsolete and have to be replaced by bigger and "better" killing machines, instead of a combined effort to build canal systems to redirect the surplus H2O.

Imagine redirecting just some of the water that flooded New Orleans, it certainly would have taken some of the pressure off of the levee banks that collapsed when the Mrs 'sippi went to town.

Even the Incas in Peru recognised the value of a water supply, and who without mechanical means channeled the water to their terraces many hundreds of years ago.
Ian.

Just as an observation, Global warming? better think of Global Warning.
We don't think, we have paid others to think for us, and look where that has left us.

Unless we ensure our water supply we are going to have a problem feeding the growing population, which is not going to go away, unless we ignore the problem, and then some of us ARE going to "go away".
Ian

Hi Geof, "a misplaced Limey"?...

I don't suppose you could send a container load of water to OZ seeing as it's coming out of your ears and you lot don't know what to do with it?...

If I remember rightly San Francisco is watered by the building of a canal some years back to bring water from the mountains, without which the city would not exist.

....Even the Incas in Peru recognised the value of a water supply, and who without mechanical means channeled the water to their terraces many hundreds of years ago.
Ian.

You are as much of a Limey as I am...born in Yorkshire and carried off to New Zealand in '52 by my family; been a Canadian since 1974 though.

Sorry, can't export Canadian water, touchy subject here because of the Greenies, they seem to have the idea that water is a restricted resource:confused::confused::confused:

EDIT because I hit the wrong button:

It is Los Angeles I think not San Fran. Actually I think the San Franites are a bit teed off because South Cal "steals" their water...another touchy subject.

And the Peruvians also had the problems of earthquakes which tipped everything the wrong way so their canals ran backwards.

And I live on a river delta about six inches above high water mark..glub, glub

Los Angeles? I knew it was somewhere over there, saw the making of the canal on the History program on TV, but what the hell, if it's feasible to create a stable environment, it can be done on a greater scale.

Now if we can only find a way to desalinate sea water economically, I'd have a bath every day instead of once a year, and only then if it was really necessary, but for now it's the shower with economy shower rose.

Wow Geof, you do like to live dangerously.
One of the criterior I abide by is to live on high ground.
When I went back to Uk in the late 60's we settled in Bristol, and in the previous August there had been serious flooding when the Chew valley dams released a large amount of water, so when we came to looking at property it was on the highest ground.

In some places the water levels reached 20 feet.
Nothing compares to water when it's out of control, nothing.
Ian.

Geof,
There may be ways to use technology to thwart global warming. If burning fossil fuels proves to be the culprit then a switch to nuclear power would certainly help. In my opinion this is long overdue. Of course the electric energy from nuclear could be used to create hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles. There has even been ideas floated to put reflectors in space to divert some of the suns' energy. Not sure how practical that would be though.
Donna

OOOOOOHHHHHHH, xyz, you do want to walk on dangerous ground.
Nuclear power, remember Chernobyl? if you want a potential disaster go nuclear.

There are better alternatives to power production, but if you just want the cheapest then thinking Nuclear is like taking a dose of nitro glycerine for constipation. It will certainly work, but who wants to clear up the mess afterwards.

There are too many people with vested interests in the Nuclear energy program that will guarantee that everyone will get a dose of the medicine, namely scientists, the very scourge of human creation that have sold their souls down the ages to satisfy their insatiable curiosities at the expense of mankind.

The problem is, when you have discovered a substance and then find a use for it, it doesn't matter if the substance is highly toxic or dangerous, there will always be someone who can design a process that will make it profitable and the dangers therefore will pale into insugnificence when the money rolls in.

Which means that the danger is still there, but we now have the money to compensate the victims that survive afterwards when something goes wrong.
It is a known fact that you can get more energy from geo thermal occurences than any nuclear set-up, but the control of the product is too hard to market internationally as compared to Yellow Cake.

Uranium is a very marketable commodity when you make sure someone is going to use it, whereas geo thermal can only be distributed by a network power system, not very controlable as far as a monopoly is concerned when the technology is relatively simple.

The whole attitude of the human race is to get rich quick at the expense of someone else and make them dependent on you for your future survival.
This is apparent with the super powers and their global economy strategy, whereby they contrive to control large areas of the globe by supplying materials and products unique to the supplier.

This is the torch and battery syndrome, they give the torch away and capture a market of battery buyers for ever.
This is now in turmoil since the advent of the LED light bulb and wind up torches, where NO batteries are used at all.

In just one instance of responsibility, if the battery manufacturers turned their production to wind up power and dropped the throw away battery as being toxic and detrimental to the environment, then we would have practised what we want to preach, if we had the courage to stand up and preach it.
Ian.

...scientists, the very scourge of human creation that have sold their souls down the ages to satisfy their insatiable curiosities at the expense of mankind...


You mean like these scientists studying "climate change"?

Nuclear power, remember Chernobyl? if you want a potential disaster go nuclear.


How many nuke plants have gone bad?

How many oil tankers have sank or caused spills that destroyed much more than Chernobyl ever thought of destroying?

(nuts)

How many nuke plants have gone bad?

How many oil tankers have sank or caused spills that destroyed much more than Chernobyl ever thought of destroying?

(nuts)

At least you can see an oil spill. Nuclear fall-out is invisible - I guess it is best to stay away from the downwind side of the gaping hole in the reactor... "There was a vibration"

Still agree nuclear is the way to go.

At least you can see an oil spill.

So that makes it ok? :confused:

So that makes it ok? :confused:
You know when the oil spill has been contained. Nuclear contamination is invisible; at least during daylight. :)

I was playing devil's advocate for the "other side", but still think nuclear power is the way to go. As an analogy of oil & coal vs nuclear, compare air travel with road travel: The probability of being involved in a crash is much higher on the road than in the air per mile traveled, but the probability of any single accident killing you is much higher for air travel than road travel.

People like me don't even think of dying in a car, although 40,000 people do die on the road in the US every year: http://www.factbook.net/EGRF_Regional_analyses_HMCs.htm . Dying in a plane crash is something I spend a little too much time contemplating. Perhaps this is because some recent crashes were not accidental.

In a similar way, most people largely disregard the risk of shipping and using fossil fuel (except for the more recent GW scare), but are terrified of nuclear power accidents.

I think the thing that worries me about Nuclear is that most times things are built by the lowest bidder; in other words the best corner cutter gets the contract.

If it was possible in some way to guarantee that the best possible design was going to be built to the best possible standards without some people and companies doing the equivalent of selling $750 hammers and $2000 toilet seats then I would be happy with Nuclear.

Quick look up...is it a bird, a plane? No its a flying pig.

What isn't built by the lowest bidder? Precede the word "bidder" with "qualified", then relax. My $50 bid to build the next generation stealth fighter was rejected; I was deemed "unqualified". That's the way it works.

Mariss

OOOOOOHHHHHHH, xyz, you do want to walk on dangerous ground.
Nuclear power, remember Chernobyl? if you want a potential disaster go nuclear.

There are better alternatives to power production, but if you just want the cheapest then thinking Nuclear is like taking a dose of nitro glycerine for constipation. It will certainly work, but who wants to clear up the mess afterwards.
Ian.
There is the danger and you have to be aware of it what with terrorism and accidents a real possibility. I suppose that is where this debate comes in. If global warming is due to man made causes then what better alternatives do you have? Nuclear has proven to be reliable, with Chernobyl or Three Mile Island you didn't have the safeguards that modern plants would enjoy. The technology has advanced. I think that it's the only energy production method that could be implemented rapidly enough to be of benefit. In environmental terms, I think the benefit/cost/risk equation would favor it over coal.
Donna

Well now, aren't we all just patting each other on the backs and keeping our fingers crossed in the process, having solved our energy problems?

We (you all) agree that nuclear is the way to go. LOL.
This is something like taking cyanide to cure aids.

What you all don't realise is the prolification of nuclear is a ticking bomb waiting for the right time to go off.
It won't happen today, and it won't happen tomorrow, but it WILL happen.

There are tons of alternate safe energy sources, but not quite so exciting or space age, that would more than fill our requirements till doomsday, but the problem is we just keep generating more and more human flotsam that in the end will outstrip any energy source capablility no matter if it is nuclear or any other magic method.

The answer to all your problems is staring you in the face but you're all too blind to see it.
So you'd rather take an Aspirin for your headache instead of cutting out the brain tumour that will eventually kill you.

BTW, did you know that the USA population for 1938 was 125,000 000?
Now it's 300,000 000.
Who's the naughty boys now then?
We won't mention China in case we offend them and they stop swamping our shops with their delectable, low cost, everyone must have one exports.

Guess who's going to by hook or by crook ensure that they are going to get a king size slice of the apple pie?
Iraq is only one example.
The Japanese in Manchuria in 1936 is a prime example of the lengths some will go when the devil drives.

You would not equal the devastation and long term destruction that would occur if one single nuclear facility went on the blink, not even if ALL the coal fired, oil fired, geo thermal, solar, water powered producers together were to malfunction.

The term "wasteland" was invented when the scientists were asked to describe the extent of the probability of a malfunction in the nuclear industry
Ian.

Well now, aren't we all just patting each other on the backs and keeping our fingers crossed in the process, having solved our energy problems?

We (you all) agree that nuclear is the way to go. LOL.
This is something like taking cyanide to cure aids.

What you all don't realise is the prolification of nuclear is a ticking bomb waiting for the right time to go off.
It won't happen today, and it won't happen tomorrow, but it WILL happen.

There are tons of alternate safe energy sources, but not quite so exciting or space age, that would more than fill our requirements till doomsday, but the problem is we just keep generating more and more human flotsam that in the end will outstrip any energy source capablility no matter if it is nuclear or any other magic method.

The answer to all your problems is staring you in the face but you're all too blind to see it.
So you'd rather take an Aspirin for your headache instead of cutting out the brain tumour that will eventually kill you.

BTW, did you know that the USA population for 1938 was 125,000 000?
Now it's 300,000 000.
Who's the naughty boys now then?
We won't mention China in case we offend them and they stop swamping our shops with their delectable, low cost, everyone must have one exports.

Guess who's going to by hook or by crook ensure that they are going to get a king size slice of the apple pie?
Iraq is only one example.
The Japanese in Manchuria in 1936 is a prime example of the lengths some will go when the devil drives.

You would not equal the devastation and long term destruction that would occur if one single nuclear facility went on the blink, not even if ALL the coal fired, oil fired, geo thermal, solar, water powered producers together were to malfunction.

The term "wasteland" was invented when the scientists were asked to describe the extent of the probability of a malfunction in the nuclear industry
Ian.
Hi handlewanker,
I'm with you, the main problem is the population time bomb that is ticking. I have no good solution for that.
Your contention that a malfunctioning reactor would cause widespread devastation is problematic. Three Mile Island didn't do that. Chernobyl did but it has since been partially repopulated so at least the damage wasn't permanent. Chernobyl was a primitive reactor by todays standards as it was one of the first built on Ukrainian soil according to Wikipedia.
Donna

XYZ,which would you rather have, green house gasses or the winds of nuclear change?
One you can live with, the other you will die with.

How ironic, it would seem that with the very best of intentions, the peacemakers and do gooders are the ones who will ultimately lead to our downfall, for it is by their very efforts that we make love not war, and so proliferate at a humungeous rate.

One thing is for sure, the genie has been let out of the bottle and now there is no turning back.
The politicians backed by the scientists will see to that.

I think if everybody were to declare themselves gay and come out of the closet, at least there would be a stay in the population boom for a while.
Ian.

......Your contention that a malfunctioning reactor would cause widespread devastation is problematic. Three Mile Island didn't do that. Chernobyl did but it has since been partially repopulated so at least the damage wasn't permanent. Chernobyl was a primitive reactor by todays standards as it was one of the first built on Ukrainian soil according to Wikipedia.
Donna

There are still large areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster that are not habitable and contamination still kills people prematurely; or at least that is what I have read in New Scientist. Also the Chernobyl event was not specifically due to it being a primitive reactor it was operator incompetence, as was Three Mile Island and Browns Ferry.

There are still large areas contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster that are not habitable and contamination still kills people prematurely; or at least that is what I have read in New Scientist. Also the Chernobyl event was not specifically due to it being a primitive reactor it was operator incompetence, as was Three Mile Island and Browns Ferry.
The cause of Chernobyl may well have been operator error. But as I recall they lacked a containment building and this is what caused the widespread radiation dissemination.
Donna

The cause of Chernobyl may well have been operator error. But as I recall they lacked a containment building and this is what caused the widespread radiation dissemination.
Donna

Well yes they did after the roof fell in :D. But even with a better containment structure Three Mile Island came close to doing the same thing. The scariest story about Three Mile Island I heard was from a British Airways Concord Pilot. Because the Concord flew so high they had radiation detectors installed for cosmic rays. On one take off from New York just after the event at Three Mile Island the radiation detectors triggered in the Concord at several thousand feet over PA. And the authorities would have you believe there was negligible leakage.

Because the Concord flew so high they had radiation detectors installed for cosmic rays. On one take off from New York just after the event at Three Mile Island the radiation detectors triggered in the Concord at several thousand feet over PA.


Hmm, that is very interesting, can you tell me the source? I would like to know more about it.
Thanks,

Hmm, that is very interesting, can you tell me the source? I would like to know more about it.
Thanks,

The source was the pilot, I met him on board ship on a trans-atlantic crossing a few years ago. I have no idea if he was actually telling a lie but he had no reason to.

The source was the pilot, I met him on board ship on a trans-atlantic crossing a few years ago. I have no idea if he was actually telling a lie but he had no reason to.

I did a fairly extensive search and could not find any reference to the incident. The Concord did have radiation detectors aboard apparently to monitor long term exposure of the crew from Solar radiation. Nothing else showed up.
Thanks anyway.

I did a fairly extensive search and could not find any reference to the incident. The Concord did have radiation detectors aboard apparently to monitor long term exposure of the crew from Solar radiation. Nothing else showed up.
Thanks anyway.

Here is a little more he mentioned. When it happened British Airways informed the Tower at La Guardia, I think it was, continued to London and discovered they had created a diplomatic incident; "what was a British aircraft doing monitoring radiation levels in US airspace?". He said it was suppressed by both governments. He was a very outspoken person who had just retired and was highly pissed off that the Concord was being taken out of service. This was on ly one anecdote he related. Like I said I have no reason to thinking he was making things up and it is water long gone under the bridge now.

Here is a little more he mentioned. When it happened British Airways informed the Tower at La Guardia, I think it was, continued to London and discovered they had created a diplomatic incident; "what was a British aircraft doing monitoring radiation levels in US airspace?". He said it was suppressed by both governments. He was a very outspoken person who had just retired and was highly pissed off that the Concord was being taken out of service. This was on ly one anecdote he related. Like I said I have no reason to thinking he was making things up and it is water long gone under the bridge now.

Hi Geof,
I may have mentioned that I have a friend who was a nuclear engineer who worked at Three Mile Island after the meltdown. I put the question to him and I'll quote his reply:
>Incidentally, I'm having some discussion on a list I'm on and they are saying that 3 mile Island put some radioactivity into the air.

It did. But then so do we when we breathe. C-14O2 is slightly radioactive and we
expel that with every breath. The amount of radioactive gas was so small that
radiation detectors at the plant boundary could not detect it. Neither could a
helicopter that flew over with gas sampling equipment.

>They said a Concord pilot reported that the radiation detectors in the aircraft went off when it flew over Penns. after the event. Apparently the Concord had the radiation detectors installed because it flew so high and they were monitoring cosmic rays. What's the lowdown on this.

That's silly on the face of it. Even if the reactor were sitting out on open ground
running at full power, the radiation emitted could not be detected by the kind of
dosimetry that might be on the Concorde. I've heard that they put some sort of
dosimetry on high altitude birds like the Concorde but by its very nature it would be
too insensitive to detect much of anything happening on the earth's surface.

This kind of stuff is pure ignorant fiction made up by people without even the most
basic understanding of physics. A simple calculation involving the absorption
coefficient of that much air would show how silly the whole concept is.

During atmospheric weapons testing, several high altitude bursts were detonated in
the Swordfish series. Even directly under the blast, no nuclear radiation was
detected, within the capabilities of the instruments employed.

I don't waste time on people like that anymore. They're the gullible type that also
believes in little green men, Roswell and that kind of rot.

Me again: That's what he said about it and he was there. Just quoting him. He, he , you'd love to meet him Geof, he's an opinionated bastard, his idea of a democracy is 3 wolves and a chicken voting on what's for dinner.
Donna
BTW, he's the friend you suggested I should talk to to get an unbrideled opinion on the questions. Not only is he a nuclear engineer, he's also good in electronics, chemistry and I think physics. Certified genius.

I expected something like this. Like I said maybe the guy was stringing a line. Ask your friend about the radioactive rebar from Mexico. See what he says about that one.

So now we can all go to sleep steeped in the knowledge that we'll wake up tomorrow without a care in the world. you wish.

The kind of claptrap I've just read is typical of all the "bury it so deep", "it'll probably never happen, I hope" brigade that couldn't see danger if it jumped out and pecked a hole in their rrrrs.

I do not for one moment wish to go down in history as an "I told you so" freak, but on the evidence presented so far WE DO HAVE A PROBLEM HOUSTEN.

The Nuclear solution is like playing with a box of matches in your trouser pocket, you won't know when they're going to catch alight, but when they do you'd better pray your balls are fireproof.
Nuclear contamination is not an option that you can tolerate to any percentage of any measured scale.

If anyone doubts that nuclear fallout, however insignifcent, is a tolerable price to pay for cheap electricity, you'd better think hard, the land values around Chernobyl are so low they are offering money to anyone who'll live there for 3 months and lives.
BTW, I heard that one down at the local watering hole too.

I say again to all those closed minded people who think that they can get away with messing up the environmrnt they presently occupy, put your money where your mouth is, if you think nuclear is safe buy a block of land next to a nuclear facility and will it to your grandchildren as their total inheritence, they'll love you for it.

All of this has nothing to do with important greenhouse gas, but it is a more significent problem by far, insomuch as it will not cure the global warming effect, just slants the attention in another direction.

The environment can survive a global warming scenario, it's part of natural history anyway, but the human scourge that has overpopulated the planet is jumping up and down at the thought that the conditions might not be to their liking in the near future.

Bad for the tourist industry and all that, nothing to do with a few islands sliding back into the sea again.
Ian.

Uh,.. Didn't all the anti-nuclear types die out in the '80s? I wonder how they would react to electricity if it were discovered today; "You can't see it! It will kill you if you touch it! Stop building the lethal electric plants! We'll all die! I can read just fine by candlelight!". Geez...

Mariss

It would seem that some people really know the difference between a usefull addition to life and a life threatening condition, enough to protest about it.
Not for nothing did they go out of their way to protect the future.

If you did but know it, the nuclear lobby has reaped dividends by making the nuclear dangers so commonplace, that everyone has become conditioned to it and like a hardened criminal who no longer feels the whip, now cease to get concerned about the possible problems their children and grandchildren will inherit from our indiscretions.

As a matter of fact we've all become a bit too blase about nuclear dangers to such an extent that when a disaster occurs (Chernobyl), we get quite excited at the sheer scale of the disaster, like a movie, and forget that real people faced real danger and really died by sacrificing their lives to contain the fallout.

In honour of the people who died at Chernobyl, for a cause that was not of their own making, I hereby observe a period of silence and hope that the lesson so thrust upon them will not be lost on the rest of the world.
Ian.

Uh,.. Didn't all the anti-nuclear types die out in the '80s? I wonder how they would react to electricity if it were discovered today; "You can't see it! It will kill you if you touch it! Stop building the lethal electric plants! We'll all die! I can read just fine by candlelight!". Geez...

Mariss

Have you ever seen this one before Mariss?



This is an extract from European Chemical News published in the 1970's.
-----------------------------------

ICI has announced the discovery of a new fire fighting agent known as WATER (Wonderful And Total Extinguishing Resource). It is particularly suitable for dealing with fires in buildings, timber yards and warehouses, and is fairly cheap to produce. It is intended that quantities of about a million gallons should be stored in open pools or reservoirs near urban areas and installations of high risk.


WATER is already encountering strong opposition from safety and environmental groups. Professor Connie Barrinner has pointed out that if anyone immersed their head in a bucket of WATER, it would prove fatal in as little as three minutes. Each of ICI's proposed reservoirs will contain enough WATER to fill half a million two-gallon buckets. Each bucketful could be used a hundred times, so there is enough WATER in one reservoir to kill the entire population of the UK.

Did we know, asked a Fire Brigades spokesman, what would happen to this new medium when it was exposed to intense heat? It had been reported that WATER was a constituent of beer; did this mean that fireman would be intoxicated by the fumes?

The Friends of the Earth said they had obtained a sample of WATER and found that it made clothes shrink. If it did this to cotton, what would it do to men?

In the House of Commons, the Home Secretary was asked if he would prohibit the manufacture and storage of this new lethal material. A full investigation was needed, he replied, and the Major Hazards Group would be asked to report.

ICI has announced the discovery of ....


Sounds like DHMO:

http://www.dhmo.org/images/poisonbottle.gif

What are some of the dangers associated with DHMO?


Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:

Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Geof,

My god, totally dangerous stuff; it's a good thing I looked it up on the internet. It's made from Hydrogen and Oxygen. Hydrogen is what blew the Hindenburg up and it is used in Hydrogen bombs. If that isn't peril then nothing is. Nuclear fire! Oxygen is what you take anti-oxidants for to live a good, progressive and environmentally sensitive lifestyle. Can't have that. In combination it sinks ships, breaks dams and drowns skyward staring turkeys when it rains. Some people drink this stuff?

For Ian: What a graciously unctuous sentiment. A moment of silence. My god, I hope you didn't stand alone like a Hamlet or Moses when you stood in reverent observance of atmospheric compression wave absence. I'm humbled by your observance and obsequiously offer my own. A Moment Of Silence For All The Victims Of Electricity:

This is for all those innocent victims of an unseen lethal scourge. To those who stuck their fingers in a light socket and instantly became metaphysically challenged. To all those who through no fault of their own tipped a radio into their bathtub. To the innocents incinerated when they plugged one too many a cord into a surge suppressor strip. Finally, this is to those who stooped to pick up a downed power line and whose last earthly thought was "I wonder if this wire is live?". A Moment Of Respectful Silence.

They too gave their full measure without any cognizance of consequences. I share your tears.

Mariss

... Hydrogen is what blew the Hindenburg up....Mariss

Now, now Mariss; you must keep up to date with the latest information otherwise you may come across as an uninformed Greenie :D

http://www.seas.ucla.edu/hsseas/releases/blimp.htm


Hydrogen Didn’t Cause Hindenburg Fire, UCLA Engineer, Former NASA Researcher Find

It was not hydrogen that caused the disastrous fire aboard the famous Hindenburg zeppelin, according to a UCLA School of Engineering and Applied Science Professor and a former NASA researcher.


Contrary to popular belief — and the findings of two official investigations — the material used to coat the "skin" of the airship, not hydrogen, was the cause of the disaster, said William D. Van Vorst, professor emeritus of chemical engineering at UCLA and Addison Bain, former manager, Hydrogen Programs Kennedy Space Center, NASA.

Their findings are revealed in a paper titled "Hydrogen and the Hindenburg," to be presented at a symposium in Antalya, Turkey, June 18-20.

Hi Geof,
I may have mentioned that I have a friend who was a nuclear engineer who worked at Three Mile Island after the meltdown. I put the question to him and I'll quote his reply:.....

.... Not only is he a nuclear engineer, he's also good in electronics, chemistry and I think physics. Certified genius.

Sorry it took so long to respond; my awe had to subside first.

The context of your 'certified genius'' response suggests he interpreted what I had related as the medium altitude detection of radiation emitted from a ground based source. Or possibly this is a wrong interpretation on my part?

I do not understand how my anecdotal comments can be interpreted in this manner but still who am I to question a genius.

Here are a couple of links for your perusal. I copied the second one just to make it easier and if you do a Google on "Three Mile Island plume" you will find plenty more.

Possibly, just possibly there exists a chance that the Concord did indeed fly through the plume. Possibly, just possibly there exists a chance that the actual direction and magnitude of the plume was unknown at the time it was occurring.

But I am not a certified genius so I have to stumble through life believing in little green men.



http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/4431/639?ck=nck

http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/feb97/wing.html

NEWS

For immediate use Feb. 24, 1997 -- No. 118


Study suggests Three Mile Island radiation may have injured people living near reactor


CHAPEL HILL -- Exposure to high doses of radiation shortly after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island may have increased cancer among Pennsylvanians downwind of the plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say.

Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health, led a study of cancer cases within 10 miles of the facility from 1975 to 1985. He and colleagues conclude that following the March 28, 1979 accident, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher downwind of the Three Mile Island reactor than upwind.

A paper Wing and colleagues wrote appears in the January issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scheduled to appear Feb. 24. They first presented their findings last July at the University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, United Kingdom, at the International Workshop on Radiation Exposures by Nuclear Facilities.

"I would be the first to say that our study doesn't prove by itself that there were high-level radiation exposures, but it is part of a body of evidence that is consistent with high exposures," Wing said. "The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported. If you say that there was no high radiation, then you are left with higher cancer rates downwind of the plume that are otherwise unexplainable."

Co-authors of the report are Dr. Douglas Crawford-Brown, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, and Dr. Donna Armstrong and David Richardson, former and current doctoral students in epidemiology, all at UNC-CH.

The new study involved re-analyzing data from a 1990 report that concluded the nation's worst civilian nuclear accident was not responsible for slightly increased cancer rates near the plant because radiation exposures were too low. Wing and colleagues re-examined data from that report using what they believed were better analytic and statistical techniques.

"Several hundred people at the time of the accident reported nausea, vomiting, hair loss and skin rashes, and a number said their pets died or had symptoms of radiation exposure," he said. "We figured that if that were possible, we ought to look at it again. After adjusting for pre-accident cancer incidence, we found a striking increase in cancers downwind from Three Mile Island."

The scientists do not believe smoking and social and economic factors were responsible for the increased cancers found in the downwind sectors.

Many earlier researchers, as well as government and industry officials, accept as fact that only small amounts of radiation were released into the atmosphere, Wing said. But it is known that plant radiation monitors went off scale when the accident started. Plumes containing higher radiation could have passed undetected, he said.

Findings from the re-analysis of cancer incidence around TMI is consistent with the theory that radiation from the accident increased cancer in areas that were in the path of radioactive plumes, the scientist said.

"This cancer increase would not be expected to occur over a short time in the general population unless doses were far higher than estimated by industry and government authorities," Wing said. "Our findings support the allegation that the people who reported rashes, hair loss, vomiting and pet deaths after the accident were exposed to high level radiation and not only suffering from emotional stress."

The UNC-CH scientist said he found it ironic that U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo dismissed more than 2,000 damage claims filed against the power plant by nearby residents last year citing a "paucity of proof" to support their cases.

"Judge Rambo spent a year or more throwing out scientific evidence presented by the plaintiffs," he said. "After she threw out the evidence that people had been injured by the accident, including part of our work, then she ruled that there wasn't enough to proceed with the case."

He also noted that the court gave attorneys for the nuclear industry the right to review the earlier health effects research before it was made public.

"I think our findings show there ought to be a more serious investigation of what happened after the Three Mile Island accident,"

Wing said. Limitations of the new study, like the earlier work, include the continuing difficulty of determining precise wind direction for several days following the accident.


PS
Notice the bit about "difficulty of determining precise wind direction for several days following the accident.

Perhaps, just perhaps somewhere in some govt records there is some flight path information for a certain Concord take off that could shed some light on this.

I prefer to believe the retired pilot. He related the anecdote in front of an audience of around 700 people during a lecture series presented on board the ocean liner QE2 on its final scheduled trans-atlantic crossing which coincided with the final flight(s) of the Concord.

Sorry it took so long to respond; my awe had to subside first.

The context of your 'certified genius'' response suggests he interpreted what I had related as the medium altitude detection of radiation emitted from a ground based source. Or possibly this is a wrong interpretation on my part?

I do not understand how my anecdotal comments can be interpreted in this manner but still who am I to question a genius.

Here are a couple of links for your perusal. I copied the second one just to make it easier and if you do a Google on "Three Mile Island plume" you will find plenty more.

Possibly, just possibly there exists a chance that the Concord did indeed fly through the plume. Possibly, just possibly there exists a chance that the actual direction and magnitude of the plume was unknown at the time it was occurring.

But I am not a certified genius so I have to stumble through life believing in little green men.



http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/207/4431/639?ck=nck

http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/feb97/wing.html

NEWS

For immediate use Feb. 24, 1997 -- No. 118


Study suggests Three Mile Island radiation may have injured people living near reactor


CHAPEL HILL -- Exposure to high doses of radiation shortly after the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island may have increased cancer among Pennsylvanians downwind of the plant, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say.

Dr. Steven Wing, associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC-CH School of Public Health, led a study of cancer cases within 10 miles of the facility from 1975 to 1985. He and colleagues conclude that following the March 28, 1979 accident, lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher downwind of the Three Mile Island reactor than upwind.

A paper Wing and colleagues wrote appears in the January issue of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scheduled to appear Feb. 24. They first presented their findings last July at the University of Portsmouth in Portsmouth, United Kingdom, at the International Workshop on Radiation Exposures by Nuclear Facilities.

"I would be the first to say that our study doesn't prove by itself that there were high-level radiation exposures, but it is part of a body of evidence that is consistent with high exposures," Wing said. "The cancer findings, along with studies of animals, plants and chromosomal damage in Three Mile Island area residents, all point to much higher radiation levels than were previously reported. If you say that there was no high radiation, then you are left with higher cancer rates downwind of the plume that are otherwise unexplainable."

Co-authors of the report are Dr. Douglas Crawford-Brown, professor of environmental sciences and engineering, and Dr. Donna Armstrong and David Richardson, former and current doctoral students in epidemiology, all at UNC-CH.

The new study involved re-analyzing data from a 1990 report that concluded the nation's worst civilian nuclear accident was not responsible for slightly increased cancer rates near the plant because radiation exposures were too low. Wing and colleagues re-examined data from that report using what they believed were better analytic and statistical techniques.

"Several hundred people at the time of the accident reported nausea, vomiting, hair loss and skin rashes, and a number said their pets died or had symptoms of radiation exposure," he said. "We figured that if that were possible, we ought to look at it again. After adjusting for pre-accident cancer incidence, we found a striking increase in cancers downwind from Three Mile Island."

The scientists do not believe smoking and social and economic factors were responsible for the increased cancers found in the downwind sectors.

Many earlier researchers, as well as government and industry officials, accept as fact that only small amounts of radiation were released into the atmosphere, Wing said. But it is known that plant radiation monitors went off scale when the accident started. Plumes containing higher radiation could have passed undetected, he said.

Findings from the re-analysis of cancer incidence around TMI is consistent with the theory that radiation from the accident increased cancer in areas that were in the path of radioactive plumes, the scientist said.

"This cancer increase would not be expected to occur over a short time in the general population unless doses were far higher than estimated by industry and government authorities," Wing said. "Our findings support the allegation that the people who reported rashes, hair loss, vomiting and pet deaths after the accident were exposed to high level radiation and not only suffering from emotional stress."

The UNC-CH scientist said he found it ironic that U.S. District Court Judge Sylvia Rambo dismissed more than 2,000 damage claims filed against the power plant by nearby residents last year citing a "paucity of proof" to support their cases.

"Judge Rambo spent a year or more throwing out scientific evidence presented by the plaintiffs," he said. "After she threw out the evidence that people had been injured by the accident, including part of our work, then she ruled that there wasn't enough to proceed with the case."

He also noted that the court gave attorneys for the nuclear industry the right to review the earlier health effects research before it was made public.

"I think our findings show there ought to be a more serious investigation of what happened after the Three Mile Island accident,"

Wing said. Limitations of the new study, like the earlier work, include the continuing difficulty of determining precise wind direction for several days following the accident.


PS
Notice the bit about "difficulty of determining precise wind direction for several days following the accident.

Perhaps, just perhaps somewhere in some govt records there is some flight path information for a certain Concord take off that could shed some light on this.

I prefer to believe the retired pilot. He related the anecdote in front of an audience of around 700 people during a lecture series presented on board the ocean liner QE2 on its final scheduled trans-atlantic crossing which coincided with the final flight(s) of the Concord.

Oh Geof,
Do you really want me to do this? Do you really want me to post your reply to John? You realize don't you that he's going to take your head off? Are you sure you know what you're asking me to do?
xyzdonna

Oh Geof,
Do you really want me to do this? Do you really want me to post your reply to John? You realize don't you that he's going to take your head off? Are you sure you know what you're asking me to do?
xyzdonna

Can't say it worries me. His other response was a bit worthless so he can only move up.

Can't say it worries me. His other response was a bit worthless so he can only move up.

(nuts)

:D

Donna, why don't you just invite your geni... err, John to come join the discussion. I'm sure there's lots we could, um, learn from each other. ;)

Oh come on. That invitation is a little ominous and uninviting don't you think?:-) The guy didn't credential himself as a "certified genius", xyzdonna did. I kind of like the guy from what I've read.

Mariss

I agree with Mariss. The guy does not seem able to show the polite gentlemanly restraint we do :) but he does not appear to be a fuzzy brained greeny.

I can't believe I read the whole thread.
I'm an Agricultural Engineer, did basic fuels research for the University of Maryland in the early eighties, particularly soy oils.
I have linked to the UK fuel standards, it is somewhat enlightening, notice the number of vehicles in the 60-70 mpg range. The vehicles are smaller than we are used to but we will adapt, some of them go like heck too.

http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/information/how-to-use-the-data-tables.asp#petrol

We need to move to fuel efficient vehicles now, they exist now, we just don't see them in the US. Ethanol from corn has got to be one of the dumbest, politically motivated decisions I can remember (should have used hull-less barley FWIW). It was good for me as we raise soybeans and wheat, which doubled and tripled in value respectively because of the ethanol demand. Our beans are processed locally into a soy blend diesel product. An acre of beans can yield up around 90 gallons of soy oil, and alot of protein and useable by products, it also adds nitrogen to the soil.

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/GQ/GQ-39.html

Nuclear energy, however unpopular is probably needed to get us out of this energy fiasco. European/French nuclear plants are all fail safe (gravity flooding and don't rely on pumps), they are typically smaller than plants in the US. We just need to build the reprocessing facility that was promised in the 70's.

Nuclear energy, however unpopular is probably needed to get us out of this energy fiasco. European/French nuclear plants are all fail safe (gravity flooding and don't rely on pumps), they are typically smaller than plants in the US. We just need to build the reprocessing facility that was promised in the 70's.

Yeah, good luck with that. We also need to be able to build more refineries until such time as we can ween ourselves from fossil fuel, but that's not going to happen either.

The last new refinery in the US was built over 20 years ago though the demand for refined fuels has certainly grown in the interim. The utopians (greens, enviros, the professionally outraged) have put enough obstacles into the gears of progress to prevent even the planning of new refineries.

Politicians cater to these obstructionists because they are onboard with the other aspects of the leftist agenda. It is a coalition of unrelated causes and special interests that unfortunately insists on being treated as a single package. This is dangerous to us all. It prevents separating out elements clearly acting against our common good and dealing with actual problems in a rational manner. This poorly thought out policy will come home to roost one day soon. We will be forced to eventually synchronize with hard reality and the immutable laws of nature; the process will be wrenching. Screw with our energy supply, defense, infrastructure and business today, freeze, become enslaved, live in a mud hut and be penniless tomorrow.

Mariss

The last new refinery in the US was built over 20 years ago though the demand for refined fuels has certainly grown in the interim. The utopians (greens, enviros, the professionally outraged) have put enough obstacles into the gears of progress to prevent even the planning of new refineries.

Politicians cater to these obstructionists because they are onboard with the other aspects of the leftist agenda. It is a coalition of unrelated causes and special interests that unfortunately insists on being treated as a single package. This is dangerous to us all. It prevents separating out elements clearly acting against our common good and dealing with actual problems in a rational manner. This poorly thought out policy will come home to roost one day soon. We will be forced to eventually synchronize with hard reality and the immutable laws of nature; the process will be wrenching. Screw with our energy supply, defense, infrastructure and business today, freeze, become enslaved, live in a mud hut and be penniless tomorrow.

Mariss

Unfortunately, by that time even "revolution ringing in the streets" probably won't be able to reverse the loss of freedoms accrued in the interim.

The last new refinery in the US was built over 20 years ago though the demand for refined fuels has certainly grown in the interim. The utopians (greens, enviros, the professionally outraged) have put enough obstacles into the gears of progress to prevent even the planning of new refineries.

Politicians cater to these obstructionists because they are onboard with the other aspects of the leftist agenda. It is a coalition of unrelated causes and special interests that unfortunately insists on being treated as a single package. This is dangerous to us all. It prevents separating out elements clearly acting against our common good and dealing with actual problems in a rational manner. This poorly thought out policy will come home to roost one day soon. We will be forced to eventually synchronize with hard reality and the immutable laws of nature; the process will be wrenching. Screw with our energy supply, defense, infrastructure and business today, freeze, become enslaved, live in a mud hut and be penniless tomorrow.

Mariss

Hi Mariss,
We've made do by adding capacity to existing refineries. By implementing conservation we'll be able to reduce our demand for petroleum. This will work better than building new refineries. We could all cut our petroleum use in half by driving more efficient (lighter, smaller) vehicles. This should be mandatory. Opps, that sounded political, sorry. I plan on getting on board for a more efficient lifestyle, my next vehicle will run on natural gas. I may even purchase a motorcycle to save on fuel.
I don't think it's a coalition of obstructionist greenies, just a collaboration of rational thinking individuals who realize that we are running out of petroleum. Maybe that's a good thing, if we act now we have the capability to implement a synthetic fuels program that will wean us off petroleum and improve the environment. It is time to quit voraciously consuming petroleum because it's finite, is probably damaging the environment, the population is increasing unsustainably, and any rational person must realize it can't continue as it has.
We simply don't have a choice. To suggest that we'll somehow enslave ourselves by doing this is to hijack the debate with fear. On the contrary, it will free us of imported oil and liberate us from dependence on countries that are run by religious extremists. Like perhaps our own country is at the present time. Sorry, couldn't resist.
xyzdonna

We've made do by adding capacity to existing refineries. By implementing conservation we'll be able to reduce our demand for petroleum. This will work better than building new refineries.

Whoa, hold on there, cowboy... (sorry, just doesn't sound right saying cowgirl... ;) )

We've made due? :confused:

You mean we've been taking it in the shorts. Right?

We've been "implementing conservation" for 30 years, why do you think we're at the level of efficiency we're at now? Building refineries will help reduce the cost at the pump. It will reduce our dependency on thugs and will help keep us from funding them.

But the most disturbing part of your post is this...

This should be mandatory.

Don't worry, Donna, I won't say how I really feel about that phrase... (nuts)

But I will tell you this... I (usually) don't care what the issue is (and this is one of those times), when anyone tries to make me do anything forcibly, I resist.

Loudly.

So don't expect me to be jumping on that bandwagon if I am "forced" to do it, and don't expect to see any of those energy saving, environmentally destructive light bulbs in my house any time soon either.

Whoa, hold on there, cowboy... (sorry, just doesn't sound right saying cowgirl... ;) )

We've made due? :confused:

You mean we've been taking it in the shorts. Right?

We've been "implementing conservation" for 30 years, why do you think we're at the level of efficiency we're at now? Building refineries will help reduce the cost at the pump. It will reduce our dependency on thugs and will help keep us from funding them.

But the most disturbing part of your post is this...



Don't worry, Donna, I won't say how I really feel about that phrase... (nuts)

But I will tell you this... I (usually) don't care what the issue is (and this is one of those times), when anyone tries to make me do anything forcibly, I resist.


Loudly.

So don't expect me to be jumping on that bandwagon if I am "forced" to do it, and don't expect to see any of those energy saving, environmentally destructive light bulbs in my house any time soon either.
Hi Rekd,
Yes I know, the mercury in those little curly cue light bulbs is troublesome. Same with fluorescent bulbs and some neon that isn't pumped with neon gas but actually pumped with argon and mercury vapor. But if you could get people to recycle them properly they would save on energy. I guess the answer is to put a tax on them and let people bring them back in for a refund. Say a $5 deposit that you would lose if you just threw them in the trash. There is no doubt that we need to conserve energy. I know, freedom loving Americans ball up when forced to do anything but do we have a choice?
Not trying to alienate someone who is even slightly on my side but we are going to have to make some changes. Implementing conservation for 30 years? Perhaps, but I think you could take the average MPG of all our vehicles and double it with smaller, lighter, more fuel efficient vehicles.
xyzdonna

But if you could get people to recycle them properly they would save on energy.

Recycling is not my issue. Breakage is the problem. I'll be damned if I'm going to put those in my house with my kids if I have to call Haz-Mat if one of them breaks. No ef'n way. Not going to happen. I don't give a crap how much energy it saves.

I guess the answer is to put a tax on them

You're losing votes. Fast.

More taxes is not the answer. To anything. I don't really care if you dress it up as a refund either.

There is no doubt that we need to conserve energy.

Most of us have been. For a long time.

That solar voltaic system on my roof? That is just the start.

I also have, as you can see from the pict, (http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=376190#post376190) a thermal coating on the roof, insulation, double pained windows, a solar hot water heater, a pellet stove for heat, a well for irrigation, a diesel truck that can run on refined vegie oil, motorcycles to save gas, and the only gas I use in the house is propane and that's for cooking and the drier.

Oh, and the best part is that I've got a very large safe busting at the seams with fire arms of all shapes and sizes with cases and cases of ammo to fend off any tax collectors or other such people that want to come here and try to force me to be "more efficient".

x

Oh, and the best part is that I've got a very large safe busting at the seams with fire arms of all shapes and sizes with cases and cases of ammo to fend off any tax collectors or other such people that want to come here and try to force me to be "more efficient".

What's that sound? The ringing of revolution? Some folks are fed up?

Guess I'm not alone!!

(A government big enough to give you every thing you need is big enough to take every thing you have!)

Recycling is not my issue. Breakage is the problem. I'll be damned if I'm going to put those in my house with my kids if I have to call Haz-Mat if one of them breaks. No ef'n way. Not going to happen. I don't give a crap how much energy it saves.



You're losing votes. Fast.

More taxes is not the answer. To anything. I don't really care if you dress it up as a refund either.



Most of us have been. For a long time.

That solar voltaic system on my roof? That is just the start.

I also have, as you can see from the pict, (http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=376190#post376190) a thermal coating on the roof, insulation, double pained windows, a solar hot water heater, a pellet stove for heat, a well for irrigation, a diesel truck that can run on refined vegie oil, motorcycles to save gas, and the only gas I use in the house is propane and that's for cooking and the drier.

Oh, and the best part is that I've got a very large safe busting at the seams with fire arms of all shapes and sizes with cases and cases of ammo to fend off any tax collectors or other such people that want to come here and try to force me to be "more efficient".

Hi Rekd,
You don't have to worry about that. There isn't enough mercury in them to be a concern. I know there was a thing on the news about a lady who broke one of them and called some govt. agency and they told her she would have to have the house decontaminated. A complete overreaction. If your kids are old enough to understand you could tell them to not ingest any shiny little balls of liquid. I doubt you'd be able to even find a droplet in the tube though.
The amount they put in them is so miniscule.
I did take the time to post your concern to my friend John who is an expert in this as well. He has been poisoned by mercury in the past and knows a thing or two about chemistry as well, I'm waiting for his reply. I also have a friend who's in his 80's and he's been making neon for over 50 years. You use a lot of mercury in neon tubes. We'll that's a little inaccurate. There are tubes filled with the actual neon gas and tubes filled with a mixture of argon and mercury vapor. The latter are usually coated inside with a phosphor coating. They are made to fluoresce when the UV produced by the ionization of the mercury vapor/argon in the tube strikes the phosphor coating. The type of phosphor determines the color. Also don't forget fluorescent light bulbs, they contain mercury as well.
Remember, mercury is a liquid at room temperature, not a gas.
xyzdonna

...... I'll be damned if I'm going to put those in my house with my kids if I have to call Haz-Mat if one of them breaks. No ef'n way. Not going to happen. I don't give a crap how much energy it saves.

.......

Oh, and the best part is that I've got a very large safe busting at the seams with fire arms of all shapes and sizes with cases and cases of ammo to fend off any tax collectors or other such people that want to come here and try to force me to be "more efficient".

Haz-Mat ??? I don't think the risk at home for your kids is CF lights - it's you!.

Meeting the Light Bulb Police at the door with all your firearms is not a healthy thing to be teaching your kids - remember they are listening and learning all the time.

If incandescents must be replaced with CF Bulbs and you don't like it you have two choices - go to bed early or use candles. Guns are not the answer.

You constitutional "Freedom" does not entitle you to a) break the law, or b) shoot the Light Bulb Police. It does entitle you to talk about it, as you are doing in this Forum, in a responsible manner.

Rhetoric about guns being a solution is offensive.
Rhetoric about being an armed insurgent with the Light Bulb Police is offensive.

Rhetoric about "you are the threat in your home" is offensive.
Rhetoric about my constitutional "Freedom" is offensive.
The founders of this country took up personal arms to oppose oppression in "a responsible manner" and if todays citizens must take up arms for that purpose, that will also be "responsible. The purpose of the Second Amendment was to limit rather than augment the power of government and with things like "the Light Bulb Police" or "Global Warming Abatement Police" in mind.

I think you are only beginning to hear the rhetoric and see the reaction should some one want to make things "mandatory".




(A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have!)

Listen to the words of an old tune and take heed!

"With compromise sway we give in half way
When we saw that rebellion was growing.
Now every thing's lost as they kneel by the cross
Where the blood of Christ is still flowing.
Too late for their sorrow they've reached their tomorrow
and reaped the seed they were sowing.
Now harvested by the ringing of revolution."

The founders of this country took up personal arms to oppose oppression in "a responsible manner" and if todays citizens must take up arms for that purpose, that will also be "responsible.

Incredible!

I sure don't want to be a Light Bulb Policeman if I'm going to be shot on the doorsteps of your or REKD's house as you act in a RESPONSIBLE MANNER opposing light bulb oppression. I would sure hate to see what would happen if you acted in an irresponsible manner.

Wouldn't it make more sense to elect somebody as President that shared your views. I don't see a lot of talk or advocacy in this forum about who is the best Candidate for the Anti GW viewpoint. It would seem to me that Political Action WORKING for the right candidate might prevent the need for armed response to oppose light bulb oppression and all the other GW stuff.

It's just a thought, but, in a democracy, I think it might be a start instead of guns.

Incredible=unbelievable. READ your history. It happened and can happen again. Historically it has happened when the government was unresponsive. We keep electing people to do the will of the people only to have them go South over subjects such as 2nd Amend. rights, border control, free capitalist markets, UNREASONABLE TAXATION and imposition of foreign rule.

I'm trying to tell you that globalism won't come peacefully.

My home is my castle and intrusion there is hazardous to your health. The kind of light bulbs one uses and the child rearing practices one prefers are his business as no one is being harmed within those walls.

Remember, we're only governed by consent! Excess force will most probably be met with force! You can not force upon free people that which is unbelievable as is this myth of man made climate change!

Least I be misjudged, let me state that policing is a subject about which I have some personal knowledge as I am a retired officer from a department in Arizona.

It's the going into someones home by force that I have the most problem with. NOT to be done lightly, usually only with a warrant and never for something as trivial as a freaking light bulb!!!

For crying in a bucket, put things in perspective! GW/CC is a fairy tail dreamed up by control freaks with the intent to enslave the masses. Orwell had nothing on these screwballs. Let's all pray it doesn't work.

For My Democrat Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.

By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

For My Republican Friends:



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hi Rekd,
Yes I know, the mercury in those little curly cue light bulbs is troublesome. .
xyzdonna

Dear Donna,

Actually, I am not that concerned about that evil stuff mercury. My father-in-law was a buyer for a very large chemical company in the fifties, and sixties. He told me how he was invited to paddle across a thirty foot vat of mercury wearing his three piece suit. Obviously, he floated high up, and paddled across sitting on his bum with his hands acting as paddles. The only ill effects were a slight itch the next day.

Have you seen the quality of light given out by those CF bulbs????

It is cold and harsh and might be excellent for an autopsy room. Personally, as I reach towards my many "male grooming products", I find it casts me in a simply frightful light.

Pip,pip,

(Er, actually, the quality of the light is ***t)

Best wishes,

Martin

Dear Donna,

Actually, I am not that concerned about that evil stuff mercury. My father-in-law was a buyer for a very large chemical company in the fifties, and sixties. He told me how he was invited to paddle across a thirty foot vat of mercury wearing his three piece suit. Obviously, he floated high up, and paddled across sitting on his bum with his hands acting as paddles. The only ill effects were a slight itch the next day.

Have you seen the quality of light given out by those CF bulbs????

It is cold and harsh and might be excellent for an autopsy room. Personally, as I reach towards my many "male grooming products", I find it casts me in a simply frightful light.

Pip,pip,

(Er, actually, the quality of the light is ***t)

Best wishes,

Martin

Hi Martin,
Yep, know what you mean, the tint of the light isn't good. But with flouescent bulbs you have various shades, cool white, daylight, don't they have this with the CF bulbs? I'm asking as I don't know. We have some of the bulbs at our house and I don't much care for the tint either. But actually the standard flourescent are quite efficient as well and would save on energy. Another option is neon, you can get neon (actually argon and mercury vapor) pumped to many different shades of white. I know a little about this as I have an electrical contractors license as well as 15 years experience in the sign industry. To put neon in the house though code requires that you keep the voltage below 1,000 volts. This would mean many transformers. Typically neon transformers come in 5KV, 6KV, 7,500V, 9KV, 10KV, 12,500V and 15KV. Me I would fudge it and put the neon in after the final electrical inspection on the house was done. And this I may do as I'm planning to build a house soon. I wouldn't recommend it for the average person who has no experience with neon, it can cause bad fires if you don't know what you're doing. But I can get the stuff made wholesale and put it in quite cheaply. If pumped in a good system a neon tube can last 60,000 hrs or more. Very cheap and energy efficient in the long run.
Take care,
xyzdonna

blah blah blah...

:yawn:

Error 442: Humor Not Found...

For My Democrat Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes.

By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

For My Republican Friends:



Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Oh, ouch!! (nuts)

:D

No matter how you feel about the war, this seems like a great way to support the troops.


When you are making out your Christmas card list this year, please include the following:

A Recovering American soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue,NW
Washington , D.C. 20307-5001

If you approve of the idea, please pass it on to your e-mail list

So now neon is a most important greenhouse gas?
I think this thread has drifted so far off topic as to be totally without meaning.

What is being missed is the contributary factors that are causing the greenhouse gasses, whereas there are many solutions to sidestepping the inevitable consequences.

With bandaid solutions of this magnitude, who needs armegeddon, we are making it a reality as we breathe.

Can anyone with any inkling of the future say with any conviction....HAPPY NEW YEAR?
Ian.

Well, OK,... HAPPY NEW YEAR, IAN!!!!

Mariss

Coming late to the party here, I've been quite busy doing other things.

Geoff, on reading your account of the effects of the radiation release at Three Mile Island, I am struck by the conspicuous absence of something that should have been front and center if people had hair loss and vomiting from radiation poisoning (which, if you get that from a single dose of radiation, usually means you are going to die in a few days).

Can you guess what is missing?

Hello and happy holidays, Geoff, and to everyone else here! (Mariss, I hope you've forgiven me, we think a lot alike.)

Rambling on in other news, I've been busy doing what Rancherbill suggested a few posts back, and using my CNC to make stencils for sign blitzes. There is one candidate who is different, and I won't stand on the sidelines and let the opportunity pass. The guns are always there for when all civilized attempts fail, and are to be used only when someone else initiates force. There are plenty of them.

Also, a new refinery is being built (finally) here in Michigan. Part of the reason for gasoline prices being what they are is that the refineries are operating near capacity. The regulatory stranglehold gets faint opposition, because it's a barrier to competition. How would you like it if your business ran at 100 percent capacity all the time?

I'll quit now or my own hot air will become the most important greenhouse gas.

Cheers,

--97T--

97T,

Forgiven you? I'm frantically going through my list of perceived insults, besmirchments of honor and unintended slights but I draw a blank.

To your 1st question: Was it the absence of any detectable radioactive contamination?
To your 2nd question: Who wouldn't?.

Mariss

BAH! HUMBUG............don't make any more love , we've enough of your type.

Keep up the good work, guns do reduce the population no matter what whotsisname says, you know the actor fellow, gets high on SOYLENT GREENS, rewrote the TEN COMMANDMENTS....oh yes, Charlie Heston, alias Major Dundee fruit cake.

Speaking of fruit cakes, how many gung ho gunnies realise the amount of toxic gas they're pumping into the atmosphere with every pop?
Now there's a debateable point, do we allow pop guns for pleasure or pain?
There's enough toxic gas in one 12 gauge shotgun shell to kill twenty people if discharged in a confined space, the pellets don't do much good either.

Once again this year, in the land of Oz, we are looking forward to the massive fireworks displays that will shroud the cities of Melbourne and sydney (Australia, down under sport) in huge clouds of toxic fumes, that not even the most hardened greenie would have the guts to criticise, lest he(she) be taken outside and made to eat snails fresh from the cabbage patch for brekky.

I've heard of paying lip service to clean air and the carbon footprint we leave as we pursue our way through daily life, but these events are just something else.
Who's kidding who? Breathe deeply kiddies, this show is especially for you and don't winge about your asthma problems, the crowd don't want to know.

Maybe I'm misinformed and the firecrackers are really filled with environmentally friendly non toxic non polluting chemical formulars espcially designed for the event.
You wish, the show must go on, and so it is with the daily grind.

No matter how well intentioned the powers that be, appear to be, they will not for one instant jeapodise their cushy positions on the podiums of power in the next election to upset a few of the locals by insisting on clean non polluting fire crackers.
When it comes down to worrying, you'll only have to worry when you can't see the sun for the toxic fumes, other than that it's all just an urban myth.
Ian.

handlewanker,

Don't be jealous now, I personally wished you a Happy New Year.:-)

Fireworks of the explosive persuasion are filled with Aluminum dust and Sodium Perchlorate in the correct stoichiometric ratio. They produce eco-friendly, earth-sensitive Aluminum and Sodium salts. A very satisfying flash and bang lets you the all-natural mineral process has gently completed.

Mariss

Mariss,

Long ago, I put a suggestion in where it wasn't welcome, and it wasn't really any of my business to do so. So all the better if you don't remember, I apologize anyway. In any event I believe you ended up winning out on the situation, which was what I had hoped for.

On the question to Geoff, no, I wasn't referring to the absence of measurable radiation, although that is a sticking point. The piece he reproduced seems to indicate that radiation could have been released undetected, and therefore we are using humans as radiation monitors. There's something else missing.

--97T--

BAH! HUMBUG............don't make any more love , we've enough of your type.

Keep up the good work, guns do reduce the population no matter what whotsisname says, you know the actor fellow, gets high on SOYLENT GREENS, rewrote the TEN COMMANDMENTS....oh yes, Charlie Heston, alias Major Dundee fruit cake.

Speaking of fruit cakes, how many gung ho gunnies realise the amount of toxic gas they're pumping into the atmosphere with every pop?
Now there's a debateable point, do we allow pop guns for pleasure or pain?
There's enough toxic gas in one 12 gauge shotgun shell to kill twenty people if discharged in a confined space, the pellets don't do much good either.

Once again this year, in the land of Oz, we are looking forward to the massive fireworks displays that will shroud the cities of Melbourne and sydney (Australia, down under sport) in huge clouds of toxic fumes, that not even the most hardened greenie would have the guts to criticise, lest he(she) be taken outside and made to eat snails fresh from the cabbage patch for brekky.

I've heard of paying lip service to clean air and the carbon footprint we leave as we pursue our way through daily life, but these events are just something else.
Who's kidding who? Breathe deeply kiddies, this show is especially for you and don't winge about your asthma problems, the crowd don't want to know.

Maybe I'm misinformed and the firecrackers are really filled with environmentally friendly non toxic non polluting chemical formulars espcially designed for the event.
You wish, the show must go on, and so it is with the daily grind.

No matter how well intentioned the powers that be, appear to be, they will not for one instant jeapodise their cushy positions on the podiums of power in the next election to upset a few of the locals by insisting on clean non polluting fire crackers.
When it comes down to worrying, you'll only have to worry when you can't see the sun for the toxic fumes, other than that it's all just an urban myth.
Ian.

I wonder how many hundred thousand "rounds" would be off set if this guy shut his toxic blow hole?

HMM, jhowelb, HMMMM, never said a word, all in your tiny pot smoking mind sport.
Don't tell me you don't smoke pot, that wouldn't go with your image would it.

Ignore the facts, you're an urban myth anyway, wasn't it you lot that spent most of your time looking for reds under the bed and then weapons of mass destruction?

'Bout time you started putting your own house in order, by that I mean that as you lot are the biggest oil consumers, you are also the biggest polluters.
Same goes for all of the hardware you're dropping IN SOMEONE ELSE'S BACKYARD.

It seems that every time you get involved in "cleaning" up the world, you also desperately look for a way to get out of your predicament without admitting to "another fine mess you've got me into Stanley".

When are you lot going to realise, you've overstayed your welcome as soon as your deflated dollars hits a new low?
My advice to you for what it's worth, is don't keep looking for a way out of your stuffups by annoying someone else around the world, just so's you can keep your armament factories outputting more weapons of mass destruction and creating a false sense of prosperity.

There will come a time when the young people of your country will want an accounting for the lives wasted on useless and extravegant projects, instead of making the life of the people back home more enjoyable.

So if you wish to be disagreable and make snide remarks, it's just water off a duck's back.
Ian.

OK, how about everyone cutting it back a notch. The ever effervescent and fractious xyzdonna has departed, having found the natives here to be too intractable for her missionary calling. She has set sail for other, more fertile shores. I hope she sends a note in a bottle to say how things are going.:-)

Everyone here is still acting like riled-up dogs. She is gone; get over it and settle down. No one is out there so stop barking. Get back to like it was before when everyone respected everyone else's points of view without getting personal. You remember how, don't you?

Geez,.. What a mess.

Mariss

There was a big Brittish study published a couple of months ago saying the number 1 producer of greenhouse gases in the world were cows.

Beano sales should skyrocket, buy your stock early. :)

My personal study says that most of the Greenhouse gases are being created by a bunch of the same people who created the phony Y2K scare. The only Beano needed is for the Al Gores of the world.

HMM, jhowelb, HMMMM, never said a word, all in your tiny pot smoking mind sport.
Don't tell me you don't smoke pot, that wouldn't go with your image would it.

Ignore the facts, you're an urban myth anyway, wasn't it you lot that spent most of your time looking for reds under the bed and then weapons of mass destruction?


Ian.

Starting a post with an insult is hardly a way to make a point. You've never laid eyes on me so trying to stereo type me that way defeats you at the outset.
I'm retired from a very successful career as a peace officer, the opposite side of the question that you want to place me.
And the "reds" I saw were involved in a shooting war with me. Got the scars to prove it and in fewer years than you have fingers I will die from damage done to my lungs while defending your freedoms. No I don't want your gratitude or your sympathy.

Mariss is right, Ratcheting back of the vitriol is definitely called for. Unwarranted conclusions about someone's character should also cease, IMHO.

So, does anyone think the rain in the Midwest will hurt the rhubarb?

Starting a post with an insult is hardly a way to make a point. You've never laid eyes on me so trying to stereo type me that way defeats you at the outset.
I'm retired from a very successful career as a peace officer, the opposite side of the question that you want to place me.
And the "reds" I saw were involved in a shooting war with me. Got the scars to prove it and in fewer years than you have fingers I will die from damage done to my lungs while defending your freedoms. No I don't want your gratitude or your sympathy.

Mariss is right, Ratcheting back of the vitriol is definitely called for. Unwarranted conclusions about someone's character should also cease, IMHO.

So, does anyone think the rain in the Midwest will hurt the rhubarb?

:cheers:

One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a
well. The animal cried piteously for hours as
the farmer tried to figure out what to do.

Finally, he decided the animal was old, and the
well needed to be covered up anyway;
it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey< BR>
He invited all his neighbors to come over and
help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began
to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the
donkey realized what was happening and cried
horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement he
quieted down.

A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally
looked down the well. He was astonished at what
he saw. With each shovel of dirt that hit his
back, the donkey was doing something amazing.
He would shake it off and take a step up.

As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel
dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it
off and take a step up.

Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey
stepped up over the edge of the well and
happily trotted off!

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds
of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well
is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of
our troubles is a steppingstone. We can get out
of the deepest wells just by not stopping,
never give up! Shake it off and take a step up.

Remember the five simple rules to be happy:

Free your heart from hatred - Forgive.

Free your mind from worries - Most never happen.

Live simply and appreciate what you have.

Give more.

Expect less

This lesson can be applied to energy shortages as well as the furor over GW/CC!

NOW ............
Enough of that crap . The donkey later came back,
and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him.
The gash from the bite got infected and
the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock.

MORAL FROM TODAY'S LESSON:

When you do something wrong, and try to cover
your ass, it always comes back to bite you.

The REAL truth begins to emerge..........
FOLLOW THE MONEY!!

Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference
December 13, 2007


Global Carbon Tax Urged at UN Climate Conference

BALI, Indonesia – A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference. A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog following the panel discussion titled “A Global CO2 Tax.” Schwank is a consultant with the Switzerland based Mauch Consulting firm


Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”


The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”


The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”


The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.


Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.”

'Diminish future prosperity'

However, ideas like a global tax and the overall UN climate agenda met strong opposition Thursday from a team of over 100 prominent international scientists who warned the UN that attempting to control the Earth's climate was "ultimately futile."


The scientists wrote, “The IPCC's conclusions are quite inadequate as justification for implementing policies that will markedly diminish future prosperity. In particular, it is not established that it is possible to significantly alter global climate through cuts in human greenhouse gas emissions." The scientists, many of whom are current or former members of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sent the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary-General.


‘Redistribution of wealth’

The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.

Calls for global regulations and taxes are not new at the UN. Former Vice President Al Gore, who arrived Thursday at the Bali conference, reiterated this week his call to place a price on carbon dioxide emissions.


In 2000, then French President Jacques Chirac said the UN’s Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic global governance." Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed Kyoto as a “socialist scheme.”

'A bureaucrat's dream'

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen warned about these types of carbon regulations earlier this year. "Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life," Lindzen said in March 2007.


In addition, many critics have often charged that proposed tax and regulatory “solutions” were more important to the promoters of man-made climate fears than the accuracy of their science.


Former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth reportedly said in 1990, "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”


The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”




Yeah, I don't ef'n think so! Next year China will be producing more pollution than the US but they are not even mentioned. Do you think THEY will pay any tax?

Um, no.

Kyoto II and nothing more. Garbage.

Greetings jhowelb, after your LENGTHY discourse on this and that and a winge about my pickin' holes in you, feel assured that you are among people who don't give a damm about the real issues that are affecting the world, and instead are merely concerned that some tin pot community is going to go down the gurgler when the polar ice caps raise the sea levels by a couple of inches or so, and so will make some country responsible for more refugees.

The sooner you all come to the conclusion that the message I bring you in all good faith is the irefutable truth as it stands, and no matter what the overpaid underworked officialdom say, plastering the cracks in the environment with freshly minted dollar bills is not the answer, and never will be, not until the last humanoid has breathed his/her/it's last gasp.

Only then will the world see volcanic action, tidal waves, earthquakes and global warming just as it always has, except the difference will be that there's nobody around to notice it.

It has been said that there are none so blind as they who will NOT see.
Well, when you come to realise that the answer is right there staring you in the face, then and only then will you realise that you are all victims of your own stupidity.

If the world community really wants to produce tangible results in our time, do nothing, carry on just as you always have, and if the devil comes a knocking pay him off then with the money saved by not spending taxed carbon credits on wild imaginative schemes.
This is tantamount to having insurance for an accident that never happened.

I could not imagine a more ludicrous scheme than a "tax on carbon dioxide emmissions"
It seems that you only have to mention CARBON D and it gets you an audience of soothsayers and well intentioned do gooders that all have the answer to our problems.
Ian.

Greetings jhowelb, after your LENGTHY discourse on this and that and a winge about my pickin' holes in you, feel assured that you are among people who don't give a damm about the real issues that are affecting the world, and instead are merely concerned that some tin pot community is going to go down the gurgler when the polar ice caps raise the sea levels by a couple of inches or so, and so will make some country responsible for more refugees.

The sooner you all come to the conclusion that the message I bring you in all good faith is the irefutable truth as it stands, and no matter what the overpaid underworked officialdom say, plastering the cracks in the environment with freshly minted dollar bills is not the answer, and never will be, not until the last humanoid has breathed his/her/it's last gasp.

Only then will the world see volcanic action, tidal waves, earthquakes and global warming just as it always has, except the difference will be that there's nobody around to notice it.

It has been said that there are none so blind as they who will NOT see.
Well, when you come to realise that the answer is right there staring you in the face, then and only then will you realise that you are all victims of your own stupidity.

If the world community really wants to produce tangible results in our time, do nothing, carry on just as you always have, and if the devil comes a knocking pay him off then with the money saved by not spending taxed carbon credits on wild imaginative schemes.
This is tantamount to having insurance for an accident that never happened.

I could not imagine a more ludicrous scheme than a "tax on carbon dioxide emmissions"
It seems that you only have to mention CARBON D and it gets you an audience of soothsayers and well intentioned do gooders that all have the answer to our problems.
Ian.

ummmmmmmmm.......................................

WHAT?! :bs:

I am not interested in your faith good or bad because your just wrong.
No matter how much faith you have that the train will take you to Utopia it will follow the tracks straight to hell if that is where they lead.

It is true that there are none so blind as they who will NOT see and the irrefutable truth as it stands is that the only crisis here is the one that the audience of soothsayers and well intentioned do gooders will create while telling us that they have the answer to our problems.

Fact: the Arctic ice has rebounded this winter catching the greenies flat footed.
Fact: the Antarctic has accumulated more ice than ever before measured.
Fact: carbon dioxide, methane and the whole gamut of GW gas is not responsible for the temp increase that started 10,000 years ago. A solar cycle is!

In the mean time keep your mitts off the economy and my taxes, find cheaper, easier energy and even if it is enviro-friendly it will sell.

Knowing that I will soon depart means that I don't give a damn? At this time in my life I have three children, 7 grandchildren, a couple of great grandchildren coming to say nothing of the group in my extended family. I don't want them to freeze in the dark as they starve in slavery as your greenies would have them do.

All this in response to a post in which I have no idea exactly what the hell you said.

Hi JH, no need to be down in the mouth. I'm almost 70, so I might just get to hell before you LOL.
The whole point of this discourse is that the environment is under threat, either implied or actually going to hell due to the build up of greenhouse gasses.

All the top brass are in the "know", whatever that means, and the likes of us are just backseat drivers going along for the ride.
Individually we can achieve NOTHING that will even rate as usefull in our endeavours to do something usefull.

That's up to the top brass, if and when they decide to make vague motions in the air that signify that they are working for their money.

My point of view is this, the problem is caused by world overpopulation, that and nothing else.
To cite a case in point, the population of the USA in 1938 ( my birth year) was 137 million, whereas today it is 300 million, some 70 years later. WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU?
If you know what an exponential curve is I won't bore you with details.
We are shagging ourselves off of the planet, and that is the problem.

I think the USA are hard at it to make sure they will at least be there when the Chinese, Indians and other bursting world populations are standing shoulder to shoulder on every square inch of land they have.

With a population growth at that rate, the predicted achievment of stability for the planet by 2050 is a laugh, so the Bali conference is just a band aid to keep the masses quiet, unless by some miracle we all stop shagging for 50 years and let the natural death rate reduce the masses.

Instead of backfiring at me for my pointed remarks, contribute some worthwhile ideas from your own thinktank and let us have a chew at them.
Ian.

BTW, it takes 3 acres of arable land to support a family of three.
This means that if you increase your population you must first increase your land yield or increase your land area.

If you increase your land area you must increase your water supply.

If you increase your food intake then you must increase your sewage handling capabilities, which leads to pollution and greenhouse gasses on a scale that outstrips the natural capability of the environment to biologically absorb the toxic waste.
Ian.

First, I've long since come to grips with my age and infirmities by way of my faith which involves another world. I'm not down in the mouth or anywhere else for that matter.

Second, I will argue that the environment is not under threat and that green house gases are not a problem. ergo, we can accomplish nothing individually or collectively because the real problem is the people trying to "solve" "the problem". To demure would be to become one of Karl Marx' useful idiots.

The nightmare scene from an old horror movie that has people standing shoulder to shoulder amid sickening pollution has the same relation to reality as does Dante's Inferno. What, pray tell would you have us do? Mass suicides? Let babies starve to death as they are doing in China? That whole conversation smack of insanity and I would as soon not go there!

Here is a revolutionary idea for you right from my think tank, "have the courage to do nothing". If you "do something even if it's wrong", it most certainly will be!

Here's another. There is only one constant.....change. That change must be gradual to avoid the destruction of the entire system. I would argue that the US has led the world in cleaning up. So much so that a group of lunatics has us taking out valuable hydro electric dams "for the enviiiiironment". And driving death traps to halt "poluuuuuution".

Take a look under the hood of your death trap. There will be little that you can recognize. One little malfunction in a computer chip and it will stop dead still! With the catalytic converter, manditory chemical additives (MTBE) and alcohol the exhaust is more toxic and environmentally distructive than ever.

We just had to get rid of freon "for the enviiiiironment" . Gone from our airconditioners, hair spray and my medical inhailers only to find out now that it is impossible for freon to do the damage attributed to it and that the replacement is far more cuastic to the environment than they claimed freon was. Net result is that we are WORSE off now.

STOP! Just quit screwing with things! You aren't as smart as you think you are!

By the way, it seems to me that the only thing your remarks have is a very sharp point. Be careful not to hurt youself with it.

BTW, it takes 3 acres of arable land to support a family of three.
This means that if you increase your population you must first increase your land yield or increase your land area.

If you increase your land area you must increase your water supply.

If you increase your food intake then you must increase your sewage handling capabilities, which leads to pollution and greenhouse gasses on a scale that outstrips the natural capability of the environment to biologically absorb the toxic waste.
Ian.

Try vertical crops, right up fences and walls.

Yes, I think you nailed it. The earth would be a pristine and pastoral place if there were no people on it. Everything would be in eternal natural harmony then. It's those pesky unnatural people that mess everything up, right? Here's some thoughts to cheer you up:

1) Humans are not unnatural. There is nothing humans can do that's unnatural. We are a part of nature just like Walt Disney's Bambi. Don't we share 99% of the same DNA with every sweet little natural critter that creeps, crawls, runs and flies?

2) The earth is not overpopulated. Everyone of the billions here have enough to eat; they are alive aren't they?

3) Some humans need to get over themselves. We don't have the power to destroy ourselves, the earth or anything else. We also don't have the power to change the inexorable forces of nature. If the earth is warming then it will continue to warm until vast forces of nature will cool it again into an ice age. Human contribution to these changes is minuscule and we should drop the arrogance to believe it's otherwise. Nothing you do or fail to do will make a difference. Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.

4) The environment is not fragile. It's not made of glass, you cannot break it. This is a fiction made up to separate us from nature, to increase our arrogance in thinking we have real power and to convert us to a philosophy of conservation where all change is bad. Conservation comes from the word "conserve" which means maintaining what is without modification. It's an aesthetic best fit for unimaginative and fearful souls.

5) Nuclear energy is good. Nature has seen fit we understand some of her more subtle secrets. She has seen to it her best natural creation now can manipulate matter on a sub-atomic level and reap the bounty nature has stored for us. Using that gift will give us far more energy to spend than we have had before. Conservation is burning stuff for energy. Nuclear is the next vital step for our evolving civilization.

Mariss

BTW, it takes 3 acres of arable land to support a family of three.
This means that if you increase your population you must first increase your land yield or increase your land area.

If you increase your land area you must increase your water supply.

If you increase your food intake then you must increase your sewage handling capabilities, which leads to pollution and greenhouse gasses on a scale that outstrips the natural capability of the environment to biologically absorb the toxic waste.
Ian.

As an aside, some California cities are recycling their sewage, all of it.

Water is purified and put back into the water system, solids are used for fertilizer to grow more food and cotton to wear.

Havn't heard yet of extraction of heavy metals to coin new money but that too can happen! :-)
:banana::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:
:stickpoke(chair):wave::rolleyes:

Phew! JH, just for one moment you had me believing that all the scientists were involved in a dastardly plot to lull the world into a false sense of euphoria so that the pollution problems that they were apparently solving (which you state do not exist, and I have your cast iron bullet riddled guarantee on that) but are actually a means of making money while solving a problem that does not exist.

I think I'll take my gas mask off and take a peek outside and test the air.
BTW, I wouldn't go around stating our secret too openly, you might get the reputation of being a disbeliever of the scientific brigade.

I find it hard to believe that the air is getting cleaner, seeing as how it's been breathed a few times more than when the population started to go critical.

I disagree on your hypothesis that population control is a bad thing, but I wouldn't go as far as cutting my own balls off, no way, also you can't get rid of people just because you don't like them.

Far better to put a tax on each new arrival, eliminate child support, which means that if you're rolling in dough you'll be in a better position to afford a large family.
This will cut out all the dregs and no hopers multiplying at the bottom end of the food chain, so ensuring that a more affluent society will be around to enjoy the rewards of carefull family planning.
I think you will agree that this is a better solution than the one you hinted at of genocide and mass suicide.

I would also hope that there are a few MORE cities than just the few round good 'ole Californie that are reusing their rubbish.
We've been doing it for years in OZ, so much so that my weekly rubbish bin only goes out once a month, all the other waste is recycled.

I take it as a personal insult the insinuation that I drive a "death trap", I would hardly call a Mercedes Benz a death trap, and what happens under the bonnet is up to the service depot, but as the trend nowadays is to go faster with less metal carried around I quite see your point, a poor man always pays twice.

Now that we've eliminated the reason for this thread on greenhouse gasses, which you say is a myth, what now?
Don't tell me, I should have guessed, you're one of the nukie brigade mob, and would love to have a nuke set-up down the road because if you can't see it, taste it or smell it then it doesn't exist.

You'll have to bury your head deeper in the ground to get away from that "accident waiting for a place to happen" scenario.
Ian.

Hi Mariss, has it ever occured to you that the human animal is the only thing that assumes, for no good reason, that if it moves shoot it, and if it grows uproot it?

Also, this animal thinks that just because it lays claim to a certain piece of real estate, irrespective if another indigenous species is happily occupying it at the time, then it automatically becomes their sole dwelling place to the total excluson of all other living things.

Apart from the desire to completely change the environment so that more of it's kind can proliferate and infect the surrounding areas, and in so doing guarantee that within a very short time that which can be described as paradise soon becomes squalid wasteland.

The human animal is the ONLY species that cuts the heads off of it's prey for sport and mounts them on the walls of their dens as trophies.
The reason they have food in abundence is because they have genetically interfered with the food chain and by selective breeding guaranteed that the gene pool of the food stock will soon become depleted.

BTW, cuddly Bambis are usually referred to as venison, and all those dear flying birds as fowls.
Not to be outdone, the Japs are now going to have a Whale of a time.
Ian.

I disagree on your hypothesis that population control is a bad thing, but I wouldn't go as far as cutting my own balls off, no way, also you can't get rid of people just because you don't like them.

Far better to put a tax on each new arrival, eliminate child support, which means that if you're rolling in dough you'll be in a better position to afford a large family.
This will cut out all the dregs and no hopers multiplying at the bottom end of the food chain, so ensuring that a more affluent society will be around to enjoy the rewards of carefull family planning.
I think you will agree that this is a better solution than the one you hinted at of genocide and mass suicide.
Ian.

My, my. You do have a firm grasp of the talking points. What flavor was the Koolaid? One more dose ought to do it for you. Never have understood how it only kills the brain cells. (See? I can throw insults with the best of them!)

You do have a couple of valid points, however. The taxes are the goal, with them one can enslave the masses unless (shudder) they can revolt with GUNS! Read your History books, it was an armed public that gave birth to this nation. I rather imagine that more than a few of your mates will have enough spine to put up a resistance.

You won't have to go to the trouble of cutting them off. Your one worlders take care of that for you. You too will be considered among the dregs and no hopers and won't be allowed to multiply at the bottom end of the food chain. Remember Karls "useful idiots", very few will be considered above that level and that will include you. Considering that you've had a massive dose of koolaid, they may actually allow you to continue to breath but very little else.

What the GW crowd suggests is genocide and to stand by quietly would amount to mass suicide.

Again, too smart by half!

So much is wrong here I don't know where to start... Suffice it to say that I'm glad some of the extreme enviro-whaco's are taking measure to ensure their particular gene doesn't remain in the pool. :rolleyes:

That being said, aside from the obvious hatred for human kind, factually, handlewanker is completely wrong in his assumptions that:


The human animal is the ONLY species that cuts the heads off of it's prey for sport and mounts them on the walls of their dens as trophies.


You obviously haven't seen sharks or killer whales playing with (i.e. showing off) their catch by flinging them up out of the water, have you?

How about garden variety cats? They show off all the time, and I'm sure if they knew how to preserve things, they'd be mounting them on walls' too.

The reason they have food in abundence is because they have genetically interfered with the food chain and by selective breeding guaranteed that the gene pool of the food stock will soon become depleted.

That's a flat out lie. First of all, over 99% of all species that ever lived on the planet are extinct due in NO part to humans. Secondly, new species are being discovered and created (naturally AND man-made or man-influenced) every day, and as the planet warms, the number of species will continue to grow, thus increasing the food supply. We will more easily be able to create better sources of food.

If you want to hate humans because they consume, there's only one way out... those individuals that hate humanity have to individually stop consuming. (nuts)

Bottom line is that when Co2 levels were five hundred times higher than now, and the planet was many degrees warmer, there were lush rain-forests world wide, and the largest number of species that ever walked the earth were walking in that time period. Global warming is going to be good for mammals and most other species.

So much is wrong here I don't know where to start... Suffice it to say that I'm glad some of the extreme enviro-whaco's are taking measure to ensure their particular gene doesn't remain in the pool. :rolleyes:

That being said, aside from the obvious hatred for human kind, factually, handlewanker is completely wrong in his assumptions that:



You obviously haven't seen sharks or killer whales playing with (i.e. showing off) their catch by flinging them up out of the water, have you?

How about garden variety cats? They show off all the time, and I'm sure if they knew how to preserve things, they'd be mounting them on walls' too.



That's a flat out lie. First of all, over 99% of all species that ever lived on the planet are extinct due in NO part to humans. Secondly, new species are being discovered and created (naturally AND man-made or man-influenced) every day, and as the planet warms, the number of species will continue to grow, thus increasing the food supply. We will more easily be able to create better sources of food.

If you want to hate humans because they consume, there's only one way out... those individuals that hate humanity have to individually stop consuming. (nuts)

Bottom line is that when Co2 levels were five hundred times higher than now, and the planet was many degrees warmer, there were lush rain-forests world wide, and the largest number of species that ever walked the earth were walking in that time period. Global warming is going to be good for mammals and most other species.

Yes, I think you nailed it. The earth would be a pristine and pastoral place if there were no people on it. Everything would be in eternal natural harmony then. It's those pesky unnatural people that mess everything up, right? Here's some thoughts to cheer you up:

1) Humans are not unnatural. There is nothing humans can do that's unnatural. We are a part of nature just like Walt Disney's Bambi. Don't we share 99% of the same DNA with every sweet little natural critter that creeps, crawls, runs and flies?

2) The earth is not overpopulated. Everyone of the billions here have enough to eat; they are alive aren't they?

3) Some humans need to get over themselves. We don't have the power to destroy ourselves, the earth or anything else. We also don't have the power to change the inexorable forces of nature. If the earth is warming then it will continue to warm until vast forces of nature will cool it again into an ice age. Human contribution to these changes is minuscule and we should drop the arrogance to believe it's otherwise. Nothing you do or fail to do will make a difference. Sit back, relax, enjoy the ride.

4) The environment is not fragile. It's not made of glass, you cannot break it. This is a fiction made up to separate us from nature, to increase our arrogance in thinking we have real power and to convert us to a philosophy of conservation where all change is bad. Conservation comes from the word "conserve" which means maintaining what is without modification. It's an aesthetic best fit for unimaginative and fearful souls.

5) Nuclear energy is good. Nature has seen fit we understand some of her more subtle secrets. She has seen to it her best natural creation now can manipulate matter on a sub-atomic level and reap the bounty nature has stored for us. Using that gift will give us far more energy to spend than we have had before. Conservation is burning stuff for energy. Nuclear is the next vital step for our evolving civilization.

Mariss


:cheers: Bravo to both of you. It's good to see that Glowballs Warming hasen't turned everyone's brains to mush! :D

.

HA HA HA, thanks for the joke. you have to admit it, whether you want to or not, you lot have some of the "garddam orfullest" weather patterns you can imagine. Tornados, hurricanes, deep snow, floods.

The song that goes, "winter in America is cold" wasn't an exageration, so I expect you lot will be doing your dammdest to ensure you get the biggest share of global warming, probably why there's been a lot of stalling at the Bali conference.

BTW WINO, the human animal IS the ONLY species that kills for sport. There is a difference between a hatred for mankind and a contemptuous opinion of mankind.

We can now safely debate the merits of the most beneficial greenhouse gas, co2, making the world cosy.

Think about this for a bit, if you had the power to remove the oversupply of co2, and did it, would you be happy if you then had a polar ice cap stretching down to New York, caused by the lack of global warming? You'd be a pratt of the first water if you said yes.

Didn't someone just say that you've got it all wrong and Freon 12 wasn't the big bad bogeyman causing alll the problems with the ozone layer depletion?
I suppose now we can get our aircon systems regassed with the old stuff, and all that crap about leaking freon gas from automobile air cons causing environmental chaos is just another scientific blunder that the highly paid but underworked scientific boffins have made.

This is what is called "stuffing up big time".
Never before in the annals of human endeavour has so much myth been foisted onto so many ignoramuses by so many applauded and over qualified bunkum merchants.

To put it plainly, how can you tell a population one minute that doomsday is approaching, and the next say that it's been posponed due to lack of interest?

Bull**** baffles brains, and it's now obvious that something else is wrong, what that something is has yet to be decided, but they'll find something lurking in the production lines of some successfull industry and the race will be on again.

To date every known compound known to man has been targeted for disaproval by the environmentalists, so much so that now the Chinese are being attacked for having lead in all their painted products.
This means that the teenagers cannot chew their toys and get high on a belly full of lead impregnated paint byproducts.
Ian.

HA HA HA, thanks for the joke. you have to admit it, whether you want to or not, you lot have some of the "garddam orfullest" weather patterns you can imagine. Tornados, hurricanes, deep snow, floods.

Yes, we do. And they've been like that since we got here hundreds of years ago. Damn SUVs are so dangerous they're going back in time! :D

BTW WINO, the human animal IS the ONLY species that kills for sport.

Wrong.

There is a difference between a hatred for mankind and a contemptuous opinion of mankind.

Your "opinion" is self-destructive, ill-founded and in-accurate.

BTW WINO, the human animal IS the ONLY species that kills for sport. There is a difference between a hatred for mankind and a contemptuous opinion of mankind.

As a young boy I witnessed my father going to war with a feral cat which would sneak into the chicken house to kill, not eat, every baby chick in the place. He did this repeatedly till one morning my father administered a .22 cal. cure to the sporting nature of the kitty in question.

I am guessing you have never witnessed a cat playing for hours with a mouse before killing it. How about Orca tossing Dolphins or seals repeatedly into the air? If you had been reared "down South" you would have witnessed coon dogs on a hunt, or even the foxhounds in Merry Old England?

We can now safely debate the merits of the most beneficial greenhouse gas, co2, making the world cozy.

If you could dump in one day the equivalent of all the co2 released by mankind from the dawn of time it would 100 years to make 1/10 of one degree F difference in the temp. Water is the "gas" that would create the greatest warming effect, but one can't tax humans for creating water! Too late for all those old ac units. They have reaped the profit from them and won't allow admission of their big "error".


This is what is called "stuffing up big time".
Never before in the annals of human endeavor has so much myth been foisted onto so many ignoramuses by so many applauded and over qualified bunkum merchants.

This is a repeating pattern of those on the left. In High School I was taught that a new ice age was on the way due to the same causes that are now being touted as the cause of all this hot air we are experiencing.


To put it plainly, how can you tell a population one minute that doomsday is approaching, and the next say that it's been postponed due to lack of interest?

This is exactly the reason many of us are such a hard sell on GW. We have seen the:bs: proffered time and again. Forgive me, I won't buy it no matter what dress you put on that old girl>

BTW WINO, the human animal IS ...........

Why do you feel compelled to besmirch the character of those with whom you disagree? As a point of fact, I can't stand the taste of wine and the effect on the body is even more repulsive. Again you couldn't be farther in the wrong and these tactics defeat you before you ever open you mouth to speak.

Should I now say some thing about your mother? Is that the ultimate goal you have in mind? A cuss fight and name calling competition?\

That won't solve the issue and you can't possibly hurt my feelings because you are transparent.

Should I now say some thing about your mother? Is that the ultimate goal you have in mind? A cuss fight and name calling competition?


His rhetoric has no value and no basis. Starting confrontations is one of the few remaining ways of bringing attention to his fouled philosophy.

This is a time tested tactic of those on the left from Mr Marx forward thru the Black Panthers and early SDS activist and currently seeing heavy use by the Democrat Party.

First they say something that one might agree with then move on into their talking points and follow with a few insults and barbs designed to distract and deflect attention from the weakness in their argument. That way they can repeat the "Big Lie" often enough that some of the opposition will accept elements of their diatribe without contest.

See? Method in the madness! All is fair in love and war, believe me this IS war by other means.

(Hehe, that's why I like to turn their own words back on them.)

BTW rekd, by wino I was adressing remarks to Wineslob, couldn't give a tinkers if you can't hold your likker.

To whom it may CONCERN, the human animal IS the most destructive beast alive, also the most sadistic, and for that matter the most arrogant and selfish.

I quote an emminent environmentalist, Doctor David Suzuki, you've probably heard of him?
He said, "In the end you will conserve only what you love, love only what you understand, understand only what you have been taught."
Humanoids can't get more self centred than that.

Try this for size, the humanoids are the only species that will without just cause imprison another species for the term of their natural lives, without just cause, so that they can be amused.

They also, without compassion, use the body of another species to test cosmetic and other medicinal compounds so that the female of the humanoids can be made to look appealing when the males are attempting to seduce them.
They also surgically adjust another species that they wish to "enhance", purely for their own amusement.

If you think that is bad, even your holy book, that is supposed to be a guide to the ever after, promotes the sacrifice and slaughter on a regular basis of innocent species, to gain the favour of a god of your own making.

With the evidence I have laid before you, you must be blind or stupid to think that the world will be a better place once you have eliminated all other life forms so that your species can proliferate at an ever expanding rate.

To sum up, you need to reduce your population levels, by hook or by crook.
The age old remedy, (suggested by some misguided pratt), of fire, plague, pestilence and war is too drastic to contemplate, and is tantemount to cutting off your arm because you have a scratch on your finger, yet knowing the problem you will vacillate and dither about without attempting to remedy the situation.

I haven't touched on the alliances that the humanoids have made with other humanoids in the past, to enable them to overcome and subjugate lesser humanoids, or the lesser or more effective "racial cleansing" that is carried out within the confines of a territory and with the sanction of the leaders of the territory.
This has happened within the 20th century on at least 3 seperate occasions.
Ian.
PS, JHowelb, you seem to be well versed in Marxism, been practiciing have we? Never could stand wannabe commies, seems like you've missed the boat old chap.

handlewanker,

The overarching theme in your post is that you just hate humans. Assuming that you are indeed also human the only course of action is to destroy your self. Sad!

PS, JHowelb, you seem to be well versed in Marxism, been practiciing have we? Never could stand wannabe commies, seems like you've missed the boat old chap.

Any one with two brain cells has to realize that "commies" are the most contemptible things on the planet in my view. I, in fact, was badly wounded and very nearly killed in actual physical shooting combat with commies. Your childish attempt to insult me has failed miserably.

Have a great day wallowing in your self hatred.

Yeah Yeah, rave on JH, some of my best friends were "commies", but now that the winds of change are blowing in a different direction they're now well respected, funny old world we live in.
I hear that the good old US of A is the largest importer of Chinese goods, (care of Walmart), you can't get more commie than that when you support their economy.

Sorry to hear of your brush with the grim reaper, you must have pissed someone off big time. You can shake hands with them now, just to show there's no hard feelings.
Who was it who said "It takes a big man to admit you've been wrong all the time"?
Old Joe McCarthy would turn over in his grave if he could see the Commie goods flooding into the country, but that's life.

It's ironic when you think about it, if all the extravagences of the cold war were added up, what with the arms race, space race, rat race, human race, race for the stars etc etc, you lot could all be driving Rolls Royces and living like kings instead of having to join the army to get a decent living wage. (documented on TV).

BTW, I don't "hate" (your words) the human race, I just have a strong desire to see common sense prevail, E.G. reduce the world population numbers, then you won't have to worry about global warming or greenhouse gasses.
The solution to the greenhouse gas problem is non existent, that is you're looking in the wrong corner.
Ian.

Yeah Yeah, rave on JH, .......

Ian.


Where, in that stream of unmentionable matter, is one constructive word directed toward green house gas? Just gas of a distinctively disgusting flavor.


Troll on troll. Your drivel doesn't warrant a real answer. I don't hold you in high enough level of esteem to be moved to anger and your diatribe is so singularly lacking in intellectual content as to never be any kind of threat. You'll just have to do much better!

You get an F!

No one ever figured out what was missing from the story about radiation release at Three Mile Island?

Something that should have been there in spades if a bunch of people were injured by a cloud of radioactive gas?

Think daughter products. Think Iodine 131.

What's missing are the widespread accounts of thyroid cancer in children in the area. People who don't know they are exposed never take iodine supplements to prevent it, and it shows up every time. It shows up later, about 10 years later, in adults.

JH, I don't hold YOU in any 'steam, you're just argumentative for the sake of mouthing off.
Too bad you feel personally responsible for the worlds troubles.
Grow up, come back with a decent input and we'll argue/discuss the difference, till you grow up, go and boil your head....
Ian.

Well NStango, anyone who wants to mess with nuclear alternatives should take your comments to heart and think about the dangers that get hidden up when things go pear shaped.
Ian.

BTW, the record of Nuclear Problems should go on record so that all those advocates for an easy way out can get wise after the fact.
1 -Russia with chernobyl.
2 - USA with 3 mile island.
3 - Uk (can't remember the name of the locality, anyone know?)
4 - ?
To sum up, it seems that the major powers are stuffing up big time with invisible Nuclear poison, so who else stands a chance getting things right if they can't.
Ian.

Before we get really scared of nuclear power generation. How many people have died do to black lung disease and other effects of polution generated by Coal powered electricity generation. As long as we learn from Chernobyl, 3 Mile island, etc. It is a fairly safe and clean alternative to finite resources.

JH, I don't hold YOU in any 'steam, you're just argumentative for the sake of mouthing off.
Too bad you feel personally responsible for the worlds troubles.
Grow up, come back with a decent input and we'll argue/discuss the difference, till you grow up, go and boil your head....
Ian.


Project your own faults on your opponent, grouse a bit then fling an insult. Typical liberal fare
.
Physician, heal thyself!

.....3 - Uk (can't remember the name of the locality, anyone know?)....

Windscale, 1957 or so. Probably much worse than Three Mile Island but pretty thoroughly covered up. I cannot remember what they renamed the plant.

Windscale, 1957 or so. Probably much worse than Three Mile Island but pretty thoroughly covered up. I cannot remember what they renamed the plant.

Dear Geof,

I think it was "re-branded" as Sellafield, but I could be entirely wrong. There was a huge fire at Windscale which stuffed out a lot of radio-active stuff.

Somebody correct me if this post is garbage...

Best wishes,

Martin

Dear Geof,

I think it was "re-branded" as Sellafield, but I could be entirely wrong. There was a huge fire at Windscale which stuffed out a lot of radio-active stuff.

Somebody correct me if this post is garbage...

Best wishes,

Martin

Lordy, lordy...

By some fluke, the old grey matter held up after all...

http://www.ukaea.org.uk/sites/windscale_history.htm

BW,

Martin

Dear Geof,

I think it was "re-branded" as Sellafield, but I could be entirely wrong. There was a huge fire at Windscale which stuffed out a lot of radio-active stuff.

Somebody correct me if this post is garbage...

Best wishes,

Martin

Yep, Sellafield. Most recently, five? ten? years ago in the news for dumping large amounts of Tritiated water into the Irish Sea I think it was.

There was a science fiction novel written about Windscale where the radiation leak was discovered because a High School Physics teacher observed that the gold leaf on an electrometer lost their charge when one of the students brought the chocalate bar he was holding close to it.

If my memory serves correctly I believe a lot od dairy operations closed down and cows were slaughtered because of Strontium 90.

After reading the entries of handwanker and jhowelb as they argue intelect and faulted "humanoids" maybe it would be better if a massive nuclear accident would happen and wipe out all of the living organisms on planet earth. Then let God sort it out.

I do not believe forums are the place to diminish ones self worth and integrity by hurling insults at each other. (nuts)

I am going back to the other forums that deal with CNC development.

The truly beautiful thing about a CNC control is that the "word" politics, is a syntax error. It is incapable of knowing anything but useful commands.

Hi PPd, CNC control, a bit like "the blind leading the blind", which interpreted means if you don't know what you are doing neither does the CNC equiptment.

I'll correct your statement on "usefull commands" by saying CNC is incapable of knowing anything but CORRECT commands.
If you give a CNC input a usefull command it will react accordingly but not necessarily in the correct direction, but it won't react to an incorrect command.

Thanks Geof for the Windscale info, lived there for years but couldn't remember the name.
Like I said, Nuclear is like trying to start a camp fire with a cut down stick of gelignite.
I am a great admirer of new technology, but there is a line in the dust that you cross only when you really have to.

This doesn't mean that it isn't usefull to have a Nuclear capability, but given the choice like having your head cut off and mounted by a skilled mortician under anaesthetic, or being mauled to death by a savage Xmas turkey in front of your friends and family, I'll reserve my preferences.

JH, I thought you were going to go and boil your head?
Ian.

Hi all, just had a thought, is the soot deposit from burning candles injurious to your health?
I read somewhere that it was one of the greatest killers from the middle ages to the early 20th century, (when electricity was used for lighting, so replacing candles and oil lamps), by causing lung cancer from inhaling the soot in the air in houses that used candles and oil lamps for the main lighting source.

I don't suppose this has anything like the potential of greenhouse gasses to cause disruption to daily life, but on the other hand it is probably a more direct cause of premerture death than having a flood caused by the probability of global warming melting the ice caps.
Ian.

Hi all, just had a thought, is the soot deposit from burning candles injurious to your health?.....

Probably, if you lived long enough.

The thing about cancer, and the increase in cancer statistics, is that if you don't die from something else you will almost certainly die from cancer.

I question your 'from the Middle Ages'; where candles available back then? Maybe candles made from beeswax but they would have been available to such a small proportion of the population any cancer statistics would not be reliable.

Hi Geof, complimento el seasono.....the satatistics I mentioned was from a study I read about twenty years or more ago that hypothesised the lung disease problems so prevalent in the early centuries, some of which were attributed to TB, but as no real lung tissue was available for autopsy analysis it was a theory based on the evidence that soot deposits found on walls of the rooms of houses of the well to do in Uk and Europe, and attributed to candle burning, was the real cause of lung degeneration.

I know definately that anyone that burns candles in a confined space, eg a room, will soon get a dirty deposit on all the furnishings and is one aspect of dingy wall paper.
Ian.

....as no real lung tissue was available for autopsy analysis it was a theory based on the evidence that soot deposits found on walls of the rooms of houses of the well to do in Uk and Europe, and attributed to candle burning, was the real cause of lung degeneration....

In the restricted segment of the population you refer to that could very well be the case. Although it could have been a version of 'miner's lung'. I think that is a correct name; a condition brought about by coal dust.

On a similar note my memory has a recollection about reading something on lung cancer or emphysema in New Guinea natives as a result of the smoke in their long houses.

Happy New Year, almost yesterday I guess, to you also.

I have heard that methane is the greenhouse gas that is the worst, I have also heard that clouds (water vapor) cause heat retention below them, and yes CO2 is one, and so on... The clouds have been around for a looooooong time and may be increasing somewhat due to rising ocean temps. Anything to excess can be bad for you... heck, you can kill yourself by drinking too much water for crying out loud. Some time back when the GW hype was young I did a little math on one of the CO2 contributors, the automobile. After estimating the number of cars in the USA. Estimating the average engine displacement of those cars. Estimating the average RPM / 2 (4 cycle) of them. Then estimating the yearly run time of those engines. After a little calculation I was looking at more than 50,000 cubic miles of air annually being sucked in, combined with the hydrocarbon fuel with reasonable efficiency, and exahusted out the tail pipes. The bigest portion of the O2 taken in comes out as CO2. I know the auto emissions are spread around, but... 50,000 cubic miles? That's like the state of Louisiana 1 mile deep in auto exhaust. True that the amount of carbon on and in the earth doesn't change much (a little increase coming in from the sun via solar wind) but we seem to be pulling it out of the ground and combining it with the oxygen in our air at a pretty good rate. Maybe the temp rise is a natural recurring cycle, are we not part of nature? Maybe there is a really looooooong "Carbon cycle" that controls the earth's temperature, can we speed that cycle up a bit?? Do we want to?? Can we slow it down ?? Do we want to ?? :)

Steve

Hi Vger, nothing you or I can do will change things, and that goes for the rest of the population.
If the truth be known, we are governed by big business, and the quest for a greater return on dollar investment.
We are told what to do by our self imposed masters, for our own good, and anyone who dares to step out of line to rock the corporate boat will be dealt with most effectively.

If an acre of land returns $1000 a sq foot because it's got oil beneath it, whereas it could produce $1000 a sq foot from a housing development, guess where the people aren't going to live.

The environment in MOST people's eyes is somewhere to exploit, and if you think I'm being pessimistic, the very first settlers in North america only saw it as somewhere to get rich quick and then get back to "civilisation".
This has been the driving force since colonisation began.

My solution to the problem is to reduce the population by whatever means available unilaterally, preferably by natural attrition, then we can all have twice as much of everything without busting a gut in the process, even the Japs would benefit by this.

The whole problem of global warming and greenhouse gas, as some of us see it, would just evaporate like a bad dream, and if one place became too warm or wet or dry to live in we'd be able to move around until we were happy, but that's too much of a dream for anyone to envisage, so all you miserable EARTHMEN, having sh1t in your own nest, you are doomed by your own stupidity to live with it.

The solution is staring you in the face, but you are ALL too blind and stupid to see it.

Now you say you want to go to Mars and colonise it? What a fools paradise you live in.
Haven't you learned anything of the laws of physics to know it is IMPOSSIBLE?
You could live in Paradise, but prefer to exist in a cess pit.
Ian.

Hi Geof, now that's a very good case for not smoking.

Incidently, ANYTHING that is not clean air is injurious to your lung tissue, just means that the dust in the air which you inhale anyway will, by normal coughing and spitting, get out, but the "extras" that get in there, like smoking particulates, industrial fall out and all the things that in nature you wouldn't be exposed to normally because they've now been so concentrated and refined as to be toxic even in small quantities are a real hazard.

Ian.

I know that almost all chemicals hvac engineers work with are :D

all cfc's, hcfc's, and hfc's have high gwp. cfc's especially, but also hcfc's, have very high odp.

of the poll, i say carbon dioxide...
regards

To sum up the 17 pages of this thread, when the day of reckoning comes, those that are unbelievers of global warming will find their waterfront properties underwater properties, with corresponding property values fluctuating to the rise and fall of the tide.

All those that take this thread seriously will head for the hills and so the great land grab will occur on land that only mountain goats would consider usefull.

One thing's for sure, the map of the world will look a whole lot different to any space traveller who's been away for some time.

Global warming is a huge misconception, as the climatic variations that exist today all over the globe will still be there when the sh1t hits the fan, the only difference being is that some regions will have a harsher winter and others will know drought as only the Gobi desert can be described.

Things are going to be a whole lot different, but there's light at the end of the tunnel, the full effects of the climate change will not be felt for a generation or two, which will give the population time to adjust to the changing scene, and so while the seaboards change their profile, the population will also change their habitat, and so the world will just go on as it always has.

Now it doesn't take a scientist to come up with this conclusion, and it is obvous that as scientists come and go, and most of them are unheard in their doomwatch predictions anyway.
I throw down a challenge to all the scientific knowalls:- predict the rate of sea level rise for the next hundred years, that is the rate per year.

I realise that this is an impossible target, yet the doomwatchers are predicting rising sea levels and we all know the Artic and Antartic ice fields vary by the year without anyone actually knowing of the reduction in volume taking place.

I can tell you now that the waters will rise a metre in the next hundred years, but no one born today will be around in a hundred years to prove me wrong.
Ian.

Mr Wanker what has got into you; a moderate sounding post?:D And a good one too; it will probably annoy both sides of the 'debate'. I think you do exagerrate a little though with the mountain goat reference; unless Aussie mountain goats are really wimpy. Even the highest sea level rise predicted by the ones who planning on melting both Antartica and Greenland is only a few hundred feet; hardly high enough to inundate mountains, not Canadian mountains anyway we have REAL ones.:)

Well Geoff, if the waters rise a 'undred feet, thur'll be standing room only.
In the process, due to the lack of food crop land mass availability, all the mountain goats will be made into "biltong".

We don't have to worry about the "fate of the nation/s", our children won't either, but their children probably will get a bit perturbed at the lack of standing room on the planet.

It always amuses me, in a bloody minded way, that no matter how bad things get, the humanoids will always scramble for high ground in order to preserve the life expectancy for just another minute, which seems to be far more rewarding than spending a lifetime trying to offset the results of over population and the ills that come with it.

The effects of global warming, if we believe all they say, will be our grandchildren's cross to bear.
Nothing we do now will change the outcome, because everything we are currently doing in our day to day lives is a contributary factor to the environmental change, and being humanoids that is par for the course, or the cost of being alive and kicking.
Ian.

Hi Geoff, BTW I blame the Canadians for all our problems, especially the drought we're having in OZ at the moment, seeing as how the winter you're currently having in Canada is tying up all the water in snow fields.

Perhaps a bit of global warming will melt the snow and then we can have some too, water that is, you can stick the snow. LOL.

I've got a mate in Ontario, who regularly moves to Vancouver for the winter.

Yeah I've seen some photos of your craggy rockies, or is it rocky crags, now that's what I call inhospitable wilderness.

To think someone said that by the year ......? we'd be reduced to standing shoulder to shoulder due to over population, idiots, well all that body heat would melt the snow, so maybe that would be a solution to the cold winters you have and our drought problem, on the other hand maybe we'd all be heading for high ground.

This only goes to show what a delicate balance the natural environment is and to stuff around with it is to reap the whirlwind, so to say.
Ian.

I'm bothered by the phrase "our delicate environment"; seriously bothered. Delicate means easily tipped one way or the other. How can anything be "delicate" when it has lasted over 4 billion years?

What is our environment?

At one time in the very distant past before photosynthesis based algae it was a methane-loaded atmosphere that had a pink sky instead of the blue we know today. The very algae that produced our atmospheric oxygen oxidized the methane and changed the very way our earth looks like today. Would you like to go back to enjoy the environment when the very sky was pink and suffocate while you admired its beauty? That was the environment then you know.

At one time (twice, maybe three times) our planet froze to the equator for tens of millions of years. It's called the "snowball earth". It happened because the oxygen the sea-borne algae created oxidized the very potent methane greenhouse gas. There was no land life on earth to create the lesser CO2 greenhouse gas so the earth froze twice, maybe three times to the equator for millions of years. Would you have liked to go back to those times to enjoy the natural environment, to enjoy the earth in its brilliant white splendor as you froze to death? That was the environment then you know.

Sometime later the greatest volcanic eruption of all time called the Siberian Traps happened. The released volcanic CO2 raised the earth's temperature to a balmy 140F average and nearly killed all life on earth. Atmospheric oxygen plummeted to under 5% but the skies I'm sure were a brilliant orange, red and purple. Would you have liked to been there to see all this beauty while you cooked and suffocated? That was the environment then you know.

Sometime later continents broke apart and reformed. Life continued, oxygen reached 35% of the atmosphere and dinosaurs appeared. Did you know 50-foot wingspan Terradactyls couldn't fly unless the atmosphere was twice as rich in oxygen as it is now? The earth was tropical from equator to pole. Would you have wanted to be there then to enjoy the beauty of nature's splendor while you were ripped apart and eaten by a raptor? That was the environment then you know.

What makes anyone think the earth's environment is arraigned to suit it's temporary inhabitants called humans? What makes anyone think given nature's terrible awe-inspiring powers that she would be concerned with regulating the temperature to within a few degrees of what we find comfortable? She is not an air-conditioning unit here for your pleasure. Nature has wiped-out and replenished far more species you could ever imagine.

She is not here for your comfort nor should you ever imagine your effects as a species has any effect on her Nature. It is her environment then you know.

Mariss

Hi Mariss, so very well put.
I take my hat off to you for putting the whole argument (discussion?) into perspective.

This puts the picture firmly into view so that all the doom watchers, drawing vast sums of money telling us we're not going to get out of it alive, can rethink their dire warnings and dream up another "fine mess we've got ourselves into".

This will justify their long term studies and wage drain on the economy, by coming up with a pseudo solution based on an extremely long term strategy, the results of which only our great grandchildren will realise.

By that time the original "problem" will have been forgotten, and so another money expending group study will quietly die a natural death.

I hear that incandesent light bulbs will be phased out by law in the UK, and so we will have another scenario for the disposal of the mercury contaminated waste in rubbish dumps that only our great grand children will see the results of, (it used to be manganese batteries).
Where to next?
Ian.

handlewanker,

Thanks. We all want to worry about something and we all want to feel we have the power to change what we are worrying about. We are wrong on both counts.

What we worry about is something that is insignificant from nature's point of view (the only view that matters). Secondly, we greatly over-exaggerate our power to influence nature in any noticeable way. If nature deemed, the Yellowstone or Mono Lake calderas could become active again and spew the equivalent of a 1,000-years worth of modern human caused CO2 into the atmosphere in a few weeks. It has happened many times in the past and it certainly will happen many times in the future.

I see the whole global warming idiocy with the same amusement as I do when someone pokes a stick into an anthill. The "Global Disruption Stick" ants come swarming out and impotently attack the stick as if that will do any good. Maybe it makes them feel they are doing something proactive for their environment but you, as the stick-wielder, know it won't stop until you are good and ready. The ants get to nourish an outsized sense of their own self-importance and you get to enjoy their folly.

My problem is our global warming ants by design intend to wreck the economy while they swarm to correct this imagined crisis. At least for the real ants it's real. This whole idiocy sprang from bad science and has been picked up by every leftist faction as the convenient lever to finally change everything they hate about our civilization. It has everything; more money for government (carbon offsets), wealth-leveling for the liberals (always for the inept, always against the competent), conservation for the environmentalists, utopians and anarchists (we should all live in mud-huts). A real bonanza of an idea and an opportunity that only comes around maybe once in 80 years.

From nature's point of view? All for nothing and for no good purpose at all; not even worth mentioning. One puff of a decent volcanic eruption trumps it.

Mariss

handlewanker,

Thanks. We all want to worry about something ..... If nature deemed, the Yellowstone or Mono Lake calderas could become active again and spew the equivalent of a 1,000-years worth of modern human caused CO2 into the atmosphere in a few weeks. It has happened many times in the past and it certainly will happen many times in the future......Mariss

But it would have a positive effect....all air traffic over the US would shut down. Think about the reduction in man made CO2 emissions.:) Just what the AGW people want.

handlewanker,

Thanks. We all want to worry about something and we all want to feel we have the power to change what we are worrying about. We are wrong on both counts.

What we worry about is something that is insignificant from nature's point of view (the only view that matters). Secondly, we greatly over-exaggerate our power to influence nature in any noticeable way. If nature deemed, the Yellowstone or Mono Lake calderas could become active again and spew the equivalent of a 1,000-years worth of modern human caused CO2 into the atmosphere in a few weeks. It has happened many times in the past and it certainly will happen many times in the future.

I see the whole global warming idiocy with the same amusement as I do when someone pokes a stick into an anthill. The "Global Disruption Stick" ants come swarming out and impotently attack the stick as if that will do any good. Maybe it makes them feel they are doing something proactive for their environment but you, as the stick-wielder, know it won't stop until you are good and ready. The ants get to nourish an outsized sense of their own self-importance and you get to enjoy their folly.

My problem is our global warming ants by design intend to wreck the economy while they swarm to correct this imagined crisis. At least for the real ants it's real. This whole idiocy sprang from bad science and has been picked up by every leftist faction as the convenient lever to finally change everything they hate about our civilization. It has everything; more money for government (carbon offsets), wealth-leveling for the liberals (always for the inept, always against the competent), conservation for the environmentalists, utopians and anarchists (we should all live in mud-huts). A real bonanza of an idea and an opportunity that only comes around maybe once in 80 years.

From nature's point of view? All for nothing and for no good purpose at all; not even worth mentioning. One puff of a decent volcanic eruption trumps it.

Mariss

Hi Mariss,
Your previous post does sort of put the climate thing in perspective, I think Geof has also held that man is not going to have a great impact on what happens in this regard. I do think you're extrapolation of that argument into what liberals intend to do when (not if!) they come into power is much more muddled.
As a born again liberal I can assure you that we have no desire to wreck the economy. Whether on not the crisis is real or imagined I'll have to leave to the scientists. Or perhaps the historians will have to settle it. What you refer to as bad science is the accepted operating hypotheses of most scientists in the field. Wealth leveling? Bush engineered the most massive shift in wealth in this nations history from the middle class over to the wealthy. Probably took some from the poor as well. Even Warren Buffett has lamented that his secretary pays more taxes as a percentage of her income than he does. I think we need a little wealth leveling.
No one is advocating mud huts. Just a level playing field to give everyone a shot at the brass ring. Health care should be a birth right. Bubba can no longer come to work for me because he's lost so much of his sight. Prompt health care might have saved it. How does our society benefit when an individual who can't get health care is left in a position where he's unable to work?
Take care,
xyzdonna

Hi Mariss,
Your previous post does sort of put the climate thing in perspective, I think Geof has also held that man is not going to have a great impact on what happens in this regard. I do think you're extrapolation of that argument into what liberals intend to do when (not if!) they come into power is much more muddled.
As a born again liberal I can assure you that we have no desire to wreck the economy. Whether on not the crisis is real or imagined I'll have to leave to the scientists. Or perhaps the historians will have to settle it. What you refer to as bad science is the accepted operating hypotheses of most scientists in the field. Wealth leveling? Bush engineered the most massive shift in wealth in this nations history from the middle class over to the wealthy. Probably took some from the poor as well. Even Warren Buffett has lamented that his secretary pays more taxes as a percentage of her income than he does. I think we need a little wealth leveling.
No one is advocating mud huts. Just a level playing field to give everyone a shot at the brass ring. Health care should be a birth right. Bubba can no longer come to work for me because he's lost so much of his sight. Prompt health care might have saved it. How does our society benefit when an individual who can't get health care is left in a position where he's unable to work?
Take care,
xyzdonna

Spoken like a true Communist.

"wealth leveling"
How about NO
If I didn't earn it ,I don't want it.
If I've earned it, it's up to me if I want to share.

If I'm told to , I'd rather set it on fire.

Daves scorched earth policy .

.

I'm with Dave. No, you can't have it, and I will destroy it before I let you take it.

Besides, it's the sun.

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175

I find it funny; in other posts, in other threads, a long time back, I had mentioned all the stuff about the Maunder Minimum and correlation of cooler weather with sunspot activity. And was more or less derided.

I find it funny; in other posts, in other threads, a long time back, I had mentioned all the stuff about the Maunder Minimum and correlation of cooler weather with sunspot activity. And was more or less derided.

Maunder, for those of you who aren't familiar, was a republican speechwriter who retired after many years of spewing typical conservative hot air. Immediately upon his retirement the atmosphere cooled significantly and sunspot activity ceased.

Since rapid swings in the earth's climate aren't possible without the aid of us Anthropogens, early evidence of cooler periods are an imaginary concoction of BigOil and the republicans. Warming periods, whenever they have taken place were as a direct result of man's environmental intervention.

There were other minimums, like Oort's, Dalton's, Sporer's, and Wolf's.

Hey Geoff, I never derided you (least not on that, anyway).

(here's a little something my partner in denial sent me.. http://climatesci.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/cotton-climate.pdf )

Geoff,

I didn't deride you over that one, either.

Cheers,
--97T--

Good Grief!!!!! 97T and fizzywhatsit both bubbling to the surface. You remind me of 'Independence Day' ...."I'm back...". I do hope you watched it.

PS: fizzy I tried to look at your link but it will have to wait; a 5" screen is a bit tiny and my poor old eyes cannot read the fine print.

Hi Guys,
I kind of got booted off that other thread, mind if I join you on this one? They weren't too happy with me, I can't fathom why.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Hi Guys,
I kind of got booted off that other thread, mind if I join you on this one? They weren't too happy with me, I can't fathom why.
Take care,
xyzdonna


Why, I thought you were leaving! Dif thread, same forum, no move!

Maunder, for those of you who aren't familiar, was a republican speechwriter who retired after many years of spewing typical conservative hot air. Immediately upon his retirement the atmosphere cooled significantly and sunspot activity ceased.

Since rapid swings in the earth's climate aren't possible without the aid of us Anthropogens, early evidence of cooler periods are an imaginary concoction of BigOil and the republicans. Warming periods, whenever they have taken place were as a direct result of man's environmental intervention.

There were other minimums, like Oort's, Dalton's, Sporer's, and Wolf's.

Hey Geoff, I never derided you (least not on that, anyway).

(here's a little something my partner in denial sent me.. http://climatesci.colorado.edu/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/cotton-climate.pdf )

Tambora erupted in 1815 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815) with a rating of seven on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Explosivity_Index); the largest eruption since the Lake Taupo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Taupo) eruption in AD 181 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/181).[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora#_note-Oppenheimer2003) The explosion was heard on Sumatra (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatra) island (more than 2,000 km or 1,200 mi away). Heavy volcanic ash (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_ash) falls were observed as far away as Borneo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneo), Sulawesi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulawesi), Java (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java) and Maluku (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maluku) islands. The death toll was at least 71,000 people, of which 11,000–12,000 were killed directly by the eruption;[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora#_note-Oppenheimer2003) most authors estimated 92,000 people were killed but this figure is based on an overestimated calculation. The eruption created global climate anomalies; 1816 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1816) became known as the Year Without a Summer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer) because of the effect on North American and European weather. Agricultural (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture) crops failed and livestock (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock) died in much of the Northern Hemisphere (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Hemisphere), resulting in the worst famine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine) of the 19th century (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_century).[ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora#_note-Oppenheimer2003)

Hi Geof,
What do you thing the time frame might be for things getting really bad? You have a population that is increasing at a time when oil is running low, I know it's difficult to predict precisely. The price of oil will increase at the same time that some alternative fuels will come on line but the price of those will be high as well. The cost will moderate the demand somewhat, but not completely. Twenty five, fifty years I wonder when all the really terrible things will begin to happen?
Take care,
xyzdonna

The oil 'shortage' is an artificial construct, and since it is very profitable, it gets weak opposition from the oil companies.

The price of oil, when pegged to gold instead of to fiat currency, has been relatively flat for a long, long time. The increase in prices across the board is due to inflation of the currency (Google "Money As Debt" and watch the video). These price increases happen not at once and not evenly -- there is a time lag between the instant newly created money is spent by the beneficiaries of government policy and the time when the loss in value of your money gets reflected evenly across the prices of all of the goods you buy. All nations use fiat currency, and all of them are always in a veritable race to inflate faster than the others. At present, the U.S. is winning the race.

Given the above, and the fact that the total amount of money in circulation has risen by 40% in the last two years, I expect that we will see oil prices in the range of US$150 to $200 per barrel within the next few years without any real scarcity, just from inflation alone. Prices in other currencies will rise similarly, but in proportion to the change in value of each currency relative to the dollar depending on how fast each of them gets debased.

There is no 'alternative' to high density fuel. Nuclear has been kept off the table for political reasons, and makes sense. Most 'alternative energy' means tax and stock swindles on low density energy sources. Low density energy sources are inefficient and therefore yield little energy and at high cost. Although they are costly, they are only as inexpensive as they are now because they can be produced using cheap and plentiful fuel in their construction. Consider what it would be like if windmills had to be made from scratch (ore) using only wind power, then you can get some idea of the actual efficiencies involved, and what the real cost of the power eked out of them is, compared to actual fuel.

Especially insane is any scheme to make fuel from food. Witness the ethanol debacle playing out right now in the U.S. Through intervention by the government, corn prices are zooming for the moon. Higher corn prices cause corn to displace other crops. Soon the prices of all other foodstuffs begins to zoom. Add on the increased cost of energy (because your food is pretty much priced based on the energy it takes to produce it, absent these insane displacements in the market) along with the monetary inflation rate, and what you see is charts on the commodities markets all having a similar shape. The same shape as the charts for gold, silver, and oil. Hooking upward.

Who does this policy affect most? Well, since the US exports a good portion of its crops, these price shocks reverberate around the world. And those who live on corn, wheat and rice in subsistence conditions begin to endure privations all out of proportion to the mere inconvenience we might suffer from a doubling or tripling of food prices (which you will see on store shelves near you this year). Already food prices are causing unrest in poorer countries around the world. Some of them are announcing price controls, which naturally results in the disappearance of the commodity from the marketplace.

The terrible things are beginning to happen now. It's going to get really terrible, not in twenty five years, but in a few years at most. The insane paper currency scheme that allows governments to spend beyond their means without taxing, by stealing value from the currency surreptitiously, is verging on collapse. In the past, the idea was to keep prices stable with inflation. This means stealing the value of increases in productivity from the populace, skimming off the improvements and preventing the benefits from increasing the standard of living of the public. Inflation causes displacements of capital into unproductive endeavors, and a continued supply of easy money causes price bubbles to appear because of speculation as people bid up prices with their easy-to-borrow money. So a boom and bust cycle is inevitable with inflatable currency. Usually, the bust is a short recession, and inflation is resumed after a recovery.

This time, things are different. This time, there might not be enough resiliency in the productive sectors of the economy to weather yet another squeezing of profits. Already the manufacturing sector has been gutted in the U.S., and now the housing sector is stepping off the cliff. There is not enough wealth generated in the farming sector to support the entire U.S. economy. As the coming 'recession' drives more and more manufacturing out of business, and bankruptcies soar, any recovery becomes increasingly remote, since there aren't any increases in productivity to sap any more. Our assets are being sold off to buy consumable goods from abroad. The production isn't there to grow or shrink any more. Our government has made it practically illegal to make anything in the U.S. through regulation, and imposes a tax rate that erases economies of scale and domination in productivity, so that third world communist countries can make the same goods and ship them around the world for far less money. The result is that manufacturing capacity, and the capital that makes it possible, are fleeing the country. And those who get out now, might survive.

In the face of all this, the bad paper floated by the banks, made possible by the run-up in real estate prices caused by inflationary policies of central banks, has rendered many of the major banks in the world technically insolvent. Since they 'can't be allowed to fail', their losses are being papered over with yet more fiat currency, even as consumers suffer a credit crunch. The paper money power mongers have played with fire for a long time, but now the fuse is near the powder keg. By keeping interest rates low and allowing banks to borrow paper money against the toxic paper that can't sell on the open market, the Fed hopes to restore solvency to the banking system at the expense of the standard of living of all holders and users of U.S. dollars. The problem with this is that this action devalues the dollar ever further. Other nations hold huge reserves of dollars, usually as government debt, and the U.S. government needs to continue borrowing for day to day operations, to the tune of about 2 billion per DAY. With the value of the dollar falling faster than the rate of interest on these debt notes, how long will the world play along, as inflation eats away at the value of their holdings?

The answer is, as long as they can. If they stop buying the debt, or start to try to sell off their bonds and bills to avoid the dollar, they could start a panic. In a panic, the value of the dollar will drop to zero. The paper money cabal can do two things right now to prevent this -- raise interest rates to make the government debt more attractive to buyers and therefore prop up the value of the dollar, and cut government spending so that creation of counterfeit money can stop. Obviously, the raise in interest rates will multiply the credit crunch already underway to an extent far beyond what happened in 1929. And the rate has to stay low until the banks and the rest of the financial system that lives on paper money shenanigans can be declared solvent again anyway. And where are the plans to scale back government? That's just not in the recipe anywhere.

Every paper money scheme in history has ended badly, usually with blood running in the streets as a repressive government takes over. The Federal Reserve is in panic mode right now, walking a tightrope between a depression on one side, and a depression on the other side. Right now they are hoping that the crash in the stock market and the zooming of staple goods prices happens slow enough not to cause a total, sudden collapse. Which is what we will have when the value of the money falls to the value of the paper it is printed on. If they are successful, you can look forward to a severely decreased standard of living (which means, of course, that you won't be able to afford very much energy). If they are unsuccessful, you can look forward to destitution (which means that you won't be able to afford enough energy to feed yourself and stay warm). Either way, the contraction in energy usage that the greenies want is on the way.

Bottom line: consumption of real goods paid for with money created out of thin air results in the impoverishment of a nation. And we are close to the brink of a collapse of the latest scheme. Your energy consumption is your standard of living. Your energy consumption is about to decrease, like it or not.

Now, let's all talk about the social benefits of forcing people to use inefficient methods of obtaining power.

Have a nice day,

--97T--

If they are unsuccessful, you can look forward to destitution (which means that you won't be able to afford enough energy to feed yourself and stay warm). Either way, the contraction in energy usage that the greenies want is on the way.

Bottom line: consumption of real goods paid for with money created out of thin air results in the impoverishment of a nation. And we are close to the brink of a collapse of the latest scheme. Your energy consumption is your standard of living. Your energy consumption is about to decrease, like it or not.

Now, let's all talk about the social benefits of forcing people to use inefficient methods of obtaining power.

Have a nice day,

--97T--


IE: The USA will begin to look like Haiti. See the pics to calculate if you really like it!

Hi NinerSevenTango,
The picture you paint is not a good one. I have to admit to the truth of most of your suppositions. The idea of all this deficit spending by the current administration is ludicrous. We will pay mightily for this incompetence. Very interesting comparison with oil and gold prices, I've never thought of it like that.
The idea of ethanol I think is folly, at least for our climate. It seems to work quite well in Brazil. Heaven knows how many rain forests have been decimated in the process however. Biodiesel is a possibility though. I have heard of yields in the range of 5,000 gal/acre/year. Not sure of the production costs but I've been told that the photobioreactors are too expensive at present. Perhaps good ol' yankee ingenuity will prove up to the task. We can always hope.
I do hope the time frame you suggest plays out to be a little longer one. Like maybe 50 years or something when I'm long gone from the earth.
Take care,
xyzdonna

<SNIP>
The idea of all this deficit spending by the current administration is ludicrous. We will pay mightily for this incompetence.
<SNIP>
Take care,
xyzdonna


Still at it, eh?

The budget is ratified and approved by the House Of Representatives. The last I checked, that was still and has been for some time under the control of folks from your side of the isle!

Still at it, eh?

The budget is ratified and approved by the House Of Representatives. The last I checked, that was still and has been for some time under the control of folks from your side of the isle!

Hi jhowelb,
Get a load of this: http://www.federalbudget.com/
It's how your government is spending your money. Look at the defense spending. We're fighting a war that was unnecessary in Iraq and losing one that is necessary in Afghanistan. This is very costly but as I've said before, stupidity is expensive. Bush engaged us in this misadventure and we will pay greatly for his incompetence.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Hi jhowelb,
Get a load of this: http://www.federalbudget.com/
It's how your government is spending your money. Look at the defense spending. We're fighting a war that was unnecessary in Iraq and losing one that is necessary in Afghanistan. This is very costly but as I've said before, stupidity is expensive. Bush engaged us in this misadventure and we will pay greatly for his incompetence.
Take care,
xyzdonna


Again, there were two votes in congress first. The Dems had access to ALL the intel and the budget is STILL under control of the House (Dems).
Remember the pics I showed you? This "misadventure" has been underway for a very long time and we have only recently begun to fight back.

Trying to fix blame elsewhere for something unavoidable is non-productive. Get a grip on reality and face the enemy who will exterminate you as willingly as you go after cockroaches. I understand that you really like the touchy-feely programs more but continued existence takes precedence.

You will have to put out the grass fire under your feet before you redesign the garden!

Again, there were two votes in congress first. The Dems had access to ALL the intel and the budget is STILL under control of the House (Dems).
Remember the pics I showed you? This "misadventure" has been underway for a very long time and we have only recently begun to fight back.

Trying to fix blame elsewhere for something unavoidable is non-productive. Get a grip on reality and face the enemy who will exterminate you as willingly as you go after cockroaches. I understand that you really like the touchy-feely programs more but continued existence takes precedence.

You will have to put out the grass fire under your feet before you redesign the garden!

Hi jhowelb,
Here is an interresting book: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47385/story.htm
For about a third of what we spend on defense in this country it might be possible to save the planet.
Take care,
xyzdonna

The centrepiece of Brown's blueprint for change is a detailed plan to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2020 to keep a lid on future temperature rises.

He also calls for a restructuring of the world economy -- and tax systems in particular -- to make markets "ecologically honest", meaning that commodity prices should reflect indirect environmental costs.

Take the price of water, which Brown argues is too cheap to discourage countries from exhausting vital sources.

"The thing to keep in mind is that it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain," he said.

"Seventy percent of all the water we use in the world -- that we pump from underground or divert from rivers -- is used in irrigation. Not everyone has connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages."



He is too uninformed to connect the dots.

If CO2 emissions are cut 80% food production will be cut by about half that.

This means the demands on water resources will drop dramatically.

But I guess solving one of two serious problems can be considered a 50% success.

Hi jhowelb,
Here is an interresting book: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/47385/story.htm
For about a third of what we spend on defense in this country it might be possible to save the planet.
Take care,
xyzdonna

That book is of no interest to me at all. A rehash of LBJ's failed war on poverty. At least 7 trillion bucks thrown at it and still no relief in sight and now you want to repeat the same fiasco with an imagined problem using junk science to apply useless measures which will result it a global Haitian economy!

NUTS!

GIVE the whole world to the radicals so you can feel good about tomorrow, Tomorrow won't come because these guys will cut YOUR head off!

Come to think of it , you have a great deal in common with the radicals. They want to take the world back to the 11th century and so do you!

We're fighting a war that was unnecessary in Iraq

That's your opinion.

We're in Iraq because we dont' want Al Quiada or Iran to be able to use the oil for spreading Sharia law world wide. If you're OK with Sharia law, then Burka Up and walk ten paces behind your owner, err, I mean husband, and don't be surprised if you get your ass beat on a regular basis because quite frankly, you will have ZERO rights under Sharia law compared to what you have now.

Don't believe Al Quada wants Iraq? They said it themselves.

Funny article, I'm sure an even funnier book.

Only $190Billion/yr??? SuchaDeal!!!!

If we spend $190B on warmth & fuzziness, then all the dictators, miscreants, and evil people who want to take over the world (i.e. Pinky and the Brain) will sit back and eat their free cookies while sippin' on a Coors at the beach. Uh huh. Yeah. Right.

No more border encroachment over natural resources, no more religious control skirmishs, no more WARS!!!

(....insert Bambi theme music here....)

Hi Geof,
What do you thing the time frame might be for things getting really bad? You have a population that is increasing at a time when oil is running low, I know it's difficult to predict precisely.not completely. Twenty five, fifty years I wonder..........xyzdonna

Oil is running low??????

They were saying twenty five, thirty years 40 years ago.

Production might be running low, but vast reserves are yet unexplored, unmeasured, and untapped.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The US policy of "protecting the pipeline routes" out of the Caspian Sea
basin (and across the Balkans) was spelled out by Clinton's Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson barely a few months prior to the 1999 bombing of
Yugoslavia:

"This is about America's energy security ... It's also about preventing
strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.

"We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west ...
We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political
interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political
investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the
pipeline map and the politics come out right."

The Anglo-American oil giants, including BP-Amoco-Arco, Texaco and Chevron
—supported by US military might — are competing with Europe's oil giant
Total-Fina-Elf (associated with Italy's ENI) which is a big player in
Kazakhstan's wealthy North East Caspian Kashagan oil fields.

The stakes are high: Kashagan is reported "so large as to even surpass the
size of the North Sea oil reserves."

http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve4/1054mac.html

That's your opinion.

We're in Iraq because we dont' want Al Quiada or Iran to be able to use the oil for spreading Sharia law world wide. If you're OK with Sharia law, then Burka Up and walk ten paces behind your owner, err, I mean husband, and don't be surprised if you get your ass beat on a regular basis because quite frankly, you will have ZERO rights under Sharia law compared to what you have now.

Don't believe Al Quada wants Iraq? They said it themselves.

Hi Rekd,
Oh I'm sure they want it all right but they wouldn't have had much chance of getting it with Saddam in charge. Instead Bush went in and got the whole region all stirred up. The Saudis warned him not to but to no avail. The massive deficits and monetary policy of this administration is devaluing our currency. This makes commodity prices go up and helps destroy our greatest strength, our economy. We'll be years recovering from these disastrous policies.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Hi Rekd,
Oh I'm sure they want it all right but they wouldn't have had much chance of getting it with Saddam in charge. Instead Bush went in and got the whole region all stirred up. The Saudis warned him not to but to no avail. The massive deficits and monetary policy of this administration is devaluing our currency. This makes commodity prices go up and helps destroy our greatest strength, our economy. We'll be years recovering from these disastrous policies.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Actually, the only reason Saddam claimed to still have the WMD was to try to keep the likes of Iran and AQ from attacking him.

The centrepiece of Brown's blueprint for change is a detailed plan to cut global carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent by 2020 to keep a lid on future temperature rises.

He also calls for a restructuring of the world economy -- and tax systems in particular -- to make markets "ecologically honest", meaning that commodity prices should reflect indirect environmental costs.

Take the price of water, which Brown argues is too cheap to discourage countries from exhausting vital sources.

"The thing to keep in mind is that it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce one tonne of grain," he said.

"Seventy percent of all the water we use in the world -- that we pump from underground or divert from rivers -- is used in irrigation. Not everyone has connected the dots to see that a future of water shortages will be a future of food shortages."



He is too uninformed to connect the dots.

If CO2 emissions are cut 80% food production will be cut by about half that.

This means the demands on water resources will drop dramatically.

But I guess solving one of two serious problems can be considered a 50% success.

Hi Geof,
Wouldn't a little global warming have the side effect of producing more precipitation? It would seem that this might result in an increase in fresh water as the seas became warmer.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Hi Rekd,
Oh I'm sure they want it all right but they wouldn't have had much chance of getting it with Saddam in charge. Instead Bush went in and got the whole region all stirred up. The Saudis warned him not to but to no avail. The massive deficits and monetary policy of this administration is devaluing our currency. This makes commodity prices go up and helps destroy our greatest strength, our economy. We'll be years recovering from these disastrous policies.
Take care,
xyzdonna


A whale of a lot of history conveniently omitted. Can you say Kuwait?

Artificial oil shortage, prohibition on new refineries, burning our lunch and cattle feed for fuel and plain ole politics on a global scale have more to do with commodities than a devalued currency. BTW, the "administration" can't tell a global market what the dollar is worth!

Hi Geof,
Wouldn't a little global warming have the side effect of producing more precipitation? It would seem that this might result in an increase in fresh water as the seas became warmer.
Take care,
xyzdonna



What difference would it make if there were no farmers to use the water and no consumers to eat the crops? We all would have gone up in smoke in the holocaust created form the destruction of society as proposed by this lunatic!! (Brown)

Oil is running low??????

They were saying twenty five, thirty years 40 years ago.

Production might be running low, but vast reserves are yet unexplored, unmeasured, and untapped.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The US policy of "protecting the pipeline routes" out of the Caspian Sea
basin (and across the Balkans) was spelled out by Clinton's Energy
Secretary Bill Richardson barely a few months prior to the 1999 bombing of
Yugoslavia:

"This is about America's energy security ... It's also about preventing
strategic inroads by those who don't share our values.

"We're trying to move these newly independent countries toward the west ...
We would like to see them reliant on western commercial and political
interests rather than going another way. We've made a substantial political
investment in the Caspian, and it's very important to us that both the
pipeline map and the politics come out right."

The Anglo-American oil giants, including BP-Amoco-Arco, Texaco and Chevron
—supported by US military might — are competing with Europe's oil giant
Total-Fina-Elf (associated with Italy's ENI) which is a big player in
Kazakhstan's wealthy North East Caspian Kashagan oil fields.

The stakes are high: Kashagan is reported "so large as to even surpass the
size of the North Sea oil reserves."

http://www.cpa.org.au/garchve4/1054mac.html

Hi fizzissist,
I hope you're right, but I also hope there proves to be a viable way to make biofuels. My best hope is biodiesel. I think it could at least contribute some toward our energy independence.
Take care,
xyzdonna

Biofuels is just one more way of robbing Peter to pay Paul (btw, am I the only one who's following the Peter Paul/Billary fundraising scandal??).

You get about 320gal of ethanol from an acre of corn (the current popular U.S. source). It takes at least 2/3 of an acre of ethanol to produce that 320gal if you're truly "renewable", so the net is not terribly efficient. On top of that, a recent study showed that the net increase in CO2 could be worse than where we're at now. As much as a 90% increase in some scenarios. (the study is, surprisingly, being disputed by ADM...)

Why is your best hope biofuel anyway? What makes you think you're getting something for nothin'? Downright foolish if you ask me, the idea of putting your food in the car.....unless you like the taste of West Texas Intermediate...

Biofuels is just one more way of robbing Peter to pay Paul (btw, am I the only one who's following the Peter Paul/Billary fundraising scandal??).

You get about 320gal of ethanol from an acre of corn (the current popular U.S. source). It takes at least 2/3 of an acre of ethanol to produce that 320gal if you're truly "renewable", so the net is not terribly efficient. On top of that, a recent study showed that the net increase in CO2 could be worse than where we're at now. As much as a 90% increase in some scenarios. (the study is, surprisingly, being disputed by ADM...)

Why is your best hope biofuel anyway? What makes you think you're getting something for nothin'? Downright foolish if you ask me, the idea of putting your food in the car.....unless you like the taste of West Texas Intermediate...

I read, I think, on the order of 140 billion gallons of gas used in the USA per year. There isn't that much arable land or water. If you forced it, no one would ever again be able to afford a taco!

Tambora erupted in......


You should read:

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization (Hardcover)
by David Keys (Author)

Here is the Amazon link:

Amazon.com: Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization: David Keys: Books

Tambora may not be the largest eruption in recorded history.

Sadly, for me, my reading these days are limited to that which can be seen on a computer screen. The old eyes are giving out, which one would think could be corrected with optics. The is, however another complication, Floaters in the gel inside the eye and so position so as to block the center of acuity. Lenses exacerbate the situation in that the floater appears darker and more opaque.

The doctors (what do they know?) say the condition was brought on by repeated physical shock to the eyes, most probably as a result of being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage. Didn't do much for my complexion either shrapnel leaves pretty bad scaring.

In any case, Tambora definitely made a dramatic rapid climatic change. I don't have specific data but would have to imagine that a pop the size of Yellowstone would really screw up a few summers. But those events, I'm told, produce cooling...not warming!

Biofuels is just one more way of robbing Peter to pay Paul (btw, am I the only one who's following the Peter Paul/Billary fundraising scandal??).

You get about 320gal of ethanol from an acre of corn (the current popular U.S. source). It takes at least 2/3 of an acre of ethanol to produce that 320gal if you're truly "renewable", so the net is not terribly efficient. On top of that, a recent study showed that the net increase in CO2 could be worse than where we're at now. As much as a 90% increase in some scenarios. (the study is, surprisingly, being disputed by ADM...)

Why is your best hope biofuel anyway? What makes you think you're getting something for nothin'? Downright foolish if you ask me, the idea of putting your food in the car.....unless you like the taste of West Texas Intermediate...

Hi fizzissist,
I agree, corn ethanol doesn't seem to work. I'm thinking biodiesel from algae. But you're not getting something for nothing from biofuels, it's an efficient way of converting sunlight into energy. Check this out: http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html He claims they are getting 5,000 gal/acre/year. You use about 10% ethanol, mix in the green sludge from the algae, wave a wand and mutter some incantations like transesterification and voila, biodiesel. I wrote the guy that authored the article and he says the only thing holding it back is the cost of the photobioreactors.
Here is another possibility, thermal depolymerization: "TDP is a form of solar energy. Sunlight converts H2O and CO2 into carbohydrates in living plants and also gives off Oxygen in the well known process of photosynthesis. In a completely TDP based economy the amount of CO2 produced when fuels are burned is exactly balanced by the plants grown to be used for TDP feedstock. In other words, it is a closed system, there is no net gain in CO2 levels, regardless of how much fuel we produce and burn. In fact, TDP could theoretically be used on the Moon, Mars, and maybe even to maintain a habitat during space travel to other stars." http://www.thermaldepolymerization.org/
I don't exactly know what thermal depolymerization is but the guy seems to think it will solve the problem.
Take care,
xyzdonna

PS: You must be the only one I haven't even heard about the "Peter Paul/Billary fundraising scandal".

Sadly, for me, my reading these days are limited to that which can be seen on a computer screen. The old eyes are giving out, which one would think could be corrected with optics. The is, however another complication, Floaters in the gel inside the eye and so position so as to block the center of acuity. Lenses exacerbate the situation in that the floater appears darker and more opaque.

The doctors (what do they know?) say the condition was brought on by repeated physical shock to the eyes, most probably as a result of being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage. Didn't do much for my complexion either shrapnel leaves pretty bad scaring.

In any case, Tambora definitely made a dramatic rapid climatic change. I don't have specific data but would have to imagine that a pop the size of Yellowstone would really screw up a few summers. But those events, I'm told, produce cooling...not warming!

Sorry to hear that jhowelb,
You've been through a lot, I wish you well.
Take care,
xyzdonna
PS: I'll be out of pocket this weekend so don't take it personal if I don't reply. I'm going to a liberal political confab in Nashville tonight. Leaving this afternoon be back tomorrow evening.

Artificial oil shortage, prohibition on new refineries, burning our lunch and cattle feed for fuel and plain ole politics on a global scale have more to do with commodities than a devalued currency. BTW, the "administration" can't tell a global market what the dollar is worth!

I think this is only partially right. I think the money issue is going to trump all other concerns eventually. The U.S. government is borrowing money for day-to-day operations at the rate of $2 billion per day. The interest on that debt is approaching the amount of income tax collected. The interest rate on further debt will have to rise precipitously as the value of the dollar falls, or else nobody will buy the government debt. Here's your rock-and-a-hard-place conundrum. Continue borrowing while offering to pay ever higher interest rates, until the interest payments eat up too much income, and what is left to do? Create the money out of thin air and make the payments with counterfeit money. Or, keep the interest rate offered low, accept lower sales of the debt, and make up the deficit by just creating the money and spending the counterfeit money directly. Either way, you are talking about hyper-inflation (as in Zimbabwe right now).

All of this could be avoided by cutting back spending to less than receipts. And government income could be enhanced by allowing the productive sectors of the economy to grow. So, what are the odds of either or both of these things happening?

First, we have been fed a line of buncombe for years, with the false alternatives between the two parties in power; arguments about which is to blame are frivolous when the whole picture comes into view. The belief and policy of both parties is based on a theory of economics that believes that consumption drives an economy, and that inflation causes production, therefore deficits don't matter. Dissent from this view is not tolerated in either party, and the press serves to silence any attempt to point out the fallacies in this theory. The parties have been able to get away with this for 100 years. Even when they failed and caused a depression, they used the event to increase their degree of control, deepening and prolonging the depression with socialist measures, and the populace went along with it. Government schooling ensures ignorance on basic economics, and a compliant press reinforces a total atmosphere that implies no other alternative exists. Suffice it to say, neither party will even acknowledge the gravity of the situation, even as the economic news rolls in showing the results of their common policy. And since both parties are dependent on and corrupted by this river of fake money, they would view it as suicide to attempt to stop it.

This time, things are different. There might not be enough manufacturing, farming, housing, and other productive activity left to fund a recovery from the recession they created.

So, what is the gravity of the situation? Consider the national debt. 9 trillion dollars, we are told. What about future obligations? Well, Social Security is paid out of current tax receipts. The 'trust fund' consists only of promissory notes -- promises to tax you more later. There is a demographic avalanche of retirees coming along. Add to that even larger Medicare and Medicaid obligations, welfare, defense, and everything else, and estimates currently run from 40 to 60 trillion dollars IN EXCESS OF WHAT CAN POSSIBLY BE EXTRACTED BY TAXATION.

There is a limit to taxation. Tax too much, and productive activity stops. Stop too much productive activity, and the entire economy collapses. The end is in sight. This wall of impending debt, with ever fewer workers in the economy to pay it, spells doom. The hyper-inflation that will be the only resort of the idiots in charge of government and its immoral central bank will be the paroxysms of a failing empire. The United States economy is failing for the same reason that the economy of the USSR failed. Central planning doesn't work, printing money doesn't get you more food or weapons, and military expenditures waste resources. The only way for humans to survive is to allow them to keep what they earn, otherwise there is no incentive to produce anything at all. Inflation is a hidden tax, it eats away at everyone's standard of living, hurting people at the lowest paying jobs the most.

The idiotic policies of the U.S. government with its direct intervention in the markets only add insult to injury. But the underlying driver is the creation of money out of thin air. It gets given to favored industries, making billionaires out of those who get to spend the money on real goods before the devaluation settles out, some of which gets recycled into politics (fascism). Watch the inevitable rise in the cost of gold and silver, this is the bellwether of the real value of the dollar. It is the money of last resort, and when the big money flees out of dollars to protect the value of savings, these metals will really take off. As they do, all of the other commodities will not be far behind.

How will this affect our foreign policy? As the U.S. government becomes increasingly insolvent, she will have to declare victory and walk away from conflicts around the world. Whichever way all other events might swirl around the issues, we are going to have to scale back and concentrate our resources on defense of our own territory, and let the rest of the world fend for itself. We just don't have the surplus to pay for our current policies any more, and we can't borrow from our future much more because our future has already been SOLD OUT.

Even with a huge retrenchment in foreign expenditures and a cutting off of foreign aid and other interventionist schemes, there still isn't enough money to pay future promises on domestic spending (welfare socialism). The government is going to have to go back on its promises to care for its own citizenry out of the pockets of other citizens. There isn't now, and there won't be in the future, enough surplus to pay for it, and printing money to pay for it will only kill off yet more of the economy.

The only question that really matters to citizens of the U.S. and other countries affected by her well-being is, what is to be the end game of those in power as the monetary system of the welfare/warfare state collapses? The lessons are there for all to see. One of the oldest is the fall of the Roman Empire. One of the most recent and striking examples is that of Weimar Germany. See how one of the most civilized nations in the history of mankind was transformed. See how common people were swept up in the transformation, how they were boxed into situations and actions that they couldn't conceive of questioning, and which are hard to fathom in hindsight.

Can enough people be educated to put up some resistance to the plans of the elites? It will be tough. The diabolical nature of the perverse love triangle of government, central banks, and favored businesses leaves the three of them with all of the money and title to all of the property at the end of the game. (Think bubbles, collapses, and foreclosures.) As Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us, a central bank is more dangerous than a standing army. Through inflation and deflation, the people will one day wake up homeless on the continent their forefathers conquered.

There is a ray of hope. We did have one presidential candidate, still technically in the race, who actually got on national TV, much to the embarrassment of the other candidates and the press machine, and told truth to power about the money issue and what it will bring us. And the measurement gotten back by primary voting indicates that around 5 percent of the populace has been woken up out of their apathy, most of them shocked and revolted when they learn what is happening. That man is Ron Paul. The message is simple: follow the constitution and go back to sound money to achieve peace, prosperity, and strength. Vilified and ridiculed by the press, most of the population goes along with the characterization of him as a 'kook' and stays in the comfortable warmth of the herd . But only those who refuse to learn. When we get 10 to 15 percent of the population aware of what is happening, there might be enough to resist whatever plans are laid for an economic catastrophe. Whatever those plans are, you can bet they don't include the constitution, the bill of rights, or you being able to keep the fruits of your labor and own property. (See the White House web site and read the executive orders published there.)

I've gone on far too long here, my apologies to all participants here. Sounds wild and paranoid, doesn't it? If anyone wants supporting documentation for any part of this wild story, just ask, I'll come back and post links later.

Shall we re-arrange a few deck chairs?

--97T--

Sadly, for me, my reading these days are limited to that which can be seen on a computer screen. The old eyes are giving out, which one would think could be corrected with optics. The is, however another complication, Floaters in the gel inside the eye and so position so as to block the center of acuity. Lenses exacerbate the situation in that the floater appears darker and more opaque.

The doctors (what do they know?) say the condition was brought on by repeated physical shock to the eyes, most probably as a result of being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage. Didn't do much for my complexion either shrapnel leaves pretty bad scaring.

I have a pretty irritating amount of that going on in one eye; I've read the material at this link with interest. Not everyone can be helped, but for those who qualify, it might be worth a try. I'd like to know what you think.

http://www.eyefloaters.com/

--97T--

I have a pretty irritating amount of that going on in one eye; I've read the material at this link with interest. Not everyone can be helped, but for those who qualify, it might be worth a try. I'd like to know what you think.

http://www.eyefloaters.com/

--97T--

Thank you, I'd been looking for data on this process because I'd heard anecdotal stories.

In the beginning, laser surgery was all the rage and a few hacks made a mess of some of it. Gradually better technics and criterion for the process emerged. I just have to imagine that the same process will play out here. Once it has become common and certain individuals have gained enough experience to be really proficient I will be more comfortable about it. With my luck, I will be long dead and buried before that happens.

On the other hand, would you want to be one of the guinnie pigs?

I might. They are claiming a very good success rate, better than with lens surgery. And the longer this goes on, the more that one eye gives up trying to focus while I read, so it loses flexibility and has to really strain if I insist upon it focusing.

--97T--

All of that has an ominous sound to it. Run, don't walk to an excellent ophthalmologist and have him look it over. This might not be floaters, could be something even more devastating. My concern is that some retinal deterioration mimics floaters.Once that vision is gone it is very hard to restore, most times impossible!

Thanks for the advice. I've done that. He requested the information when I told him about it, he said he was intrigued and might consider training in the procedure himself. I don't think he ever did, though. The condition is not as ominous as I made it sound. As I age, the lenses lose flexibility so I lose the ability to focus up close, and have to resort to reading glasses. The weakest drugstore ones work fine. But I like to do without whenever I can, because if I use the glasses as a crutch for like a week, then I notice my eyes have a much harder time focusing without them. So I try not to use them unless necessary. Everyone else I know that started wearing them habitually for the same condition keeps having to get stronger and stronger lenses, so my aging eyes degrade slower than theirs. It's just a theory of mine. But I find myself relying more on the dominant eye while reading printed matter up close, because with that floater settling in on the focus point in the other eye, sometimes it stops straining to focus, and gets lazy about it. Anything beyond about 24 inches is fine, and no serious conditions exist, thankfully. But I'm tempted by that information, and not the least bit surprised that only a few intelligent individuals are experts on the subject.

Don't stop looking at the first Dr you find and check them all out really close. Get right up in the Dr,'s face and ask how much experience at this he's had and his success rate AND ask for references! After all, they are your eyes!

Don't stop looking at the first Dr you find and check them all out really close. Get right up in the Dr,'s face and ask how much experience at this he's had and his success rate AND ask for references! After all, they are your eyes!

That much, you can count on!

--97T--

About thermal depolymerization:

There is a lot more information in the Wiki on the subject than at that fact-free website.

Turns out a few lesser-known facts come to light. The feedstock is turkey offal and pig fat. The plant puts out high quality oil and nets an energy surplus if you don't count the energy that goes into the feedstock. Economic performance suffers some because measures have to be taken to contain the awful stink. So far, it only makes money when heavily subsidized with tax dollars.

It's interesting technology and it might make sense for garbage processing when energy costs are high, but only if they are high compared to the capital costs of the plant itself (which high energy costs will affect; energy costs make up the cost of everything else).

But it can never scale up enough to make a dent for our transportation needs. Animal fat and other offal are solar power from grains and grasses, concentrated by the animal over time. So ultimately, the output from the plant is concentrated solar power. You can get it cheaper by using garbage, but there just isn't enough land area to devote to the slow concentration of solar power to produce enough energy to use for transportation.

So it is yet another tax and stock swindle, as all low density forms of energy are destined to be. If it ever turns out to make an honest profit (honest being defined as not consuming money taken from others at the point of a gun), it will still be a piddling amount of energy, limited by the cost and quantity of the feedstocks available. What must be considered, if we are to accept that it is morally justifiable to steal the product of one man's labor to benefit another for some lofty goal, is the energy equivalence of the dollars you can extract from willing slaves, versus the energy content of the man himself. Since society is deemed to exercise ownership over a man, then if the energy content of the man exceeds the value that can be extracted out of the fruits of his labor, then it follows that they could grind up humans to power such a plant, and the other humans using the energy therefrom would derive some benefit while simultaneously decreasing the demand for energy from all other sources. As long as you were in the group having the guns and getting the energy, rather than being the group to be sacrificed at the altar of environmentalism, this would be an ideal final solution.

--97T--

On biodiesel from algae:

I was surprised and disappointed to see such a rambling, disjointed article on a university website. At least the author acknowledges that hydrogen is an energy carrier and not a fuel, and a bad energy carrier at that, but I didn't think that belonged in the article.

But ignoring that, it seems that if you could get 5,000 gallons per acre/year of biodiesel from an algae pond, you could have true energy independence. That is, if you could afford to own an acre of land, you could make your own diesel fuel. That would be independence!

But alas, mother nature intervenes to degrade efficiencies along the way and foil all of our plans. Not counted is the cost of the water, the cost of maintaining salinity, the cost of the nutrients, the cost of the ethanol and conversion process, storage, the cost of labor to operate the whole deal, the risk cost of problems with fouling or die-off, bad weather events, and a host of other things. The ideal organism hasn't been found yet, all of the organisms only grow within a certain temperature range, and open ponds are not feasible for a large number of reasons. So one of the problems to consider is the cost of an acre of glass or plastic. Plus the cost to keep the glass clean, and the cost to stir the water, etc. Also, if they develop a hardy strain that is ideal, we need to consider what happens if it becomes an invasive species.

Instead of a demonstration on how the scheme could make money, it is a plea for more money for research. If there is money in it, and there would be if it could compete with existing fuels, lots of people will be all over this. Without tax money. If the efficiencies are there, it will spring up on small scales all over the place, not needing a huge plant in the Sonoran desert to get started. (But that would be a good place to start -- on a small scale, maybe -- the water is already saline and the insolation is the best you can get. But the water supply is limited in deserts.)

As an exercise on whether this approach overcomes the scaling problem, it shines a ray of hope, but the problems scale up with the size of the operation. It would be interesting to see a small operation, one acre in size, pay for itself.

To get an idea into the energy, labor, capital, and risk challenges involved with this scheme, see the wiki on Algaculture, which is much more informative. The good news is that private companies are working on it; that means that there might be a chance for it to succeed someday.

Too bad we have to continually ignore the fact that we sit on huge reserves of oil, enough to give us energy independence, but we are locked away from it while our economy and our freedoms slide into the toilet.

--97T--

On biodiesel from algae:

I was surprised and disappointed to see such a rambling, disjointed article on a university website. --97T--


Sorry to break it to many of our kind readers, but that's what universities do. They get paid good money to do it too.

Again, No Problem, No Funding.

Hi 97T and others who spell the end of the world so blandly.
Did it ever occur to you that the real solution to our problems is to reduce the population level?
It didn't?

Where have you got your head buried, can't see the wood for the trees no doubt.

I've read the foregoing rambles by so called "eggspurts" in the worldly events, and not one of you will acknowledge that YOU as a species are making a rod for your own backs?

By that it must be obvious to even some of the morons who can't see the real issue, but keep hammering away at solutions that at very best are just band aids on a corpse.

You are not going to solve the problem of global warming, or cooling, or for that matter of rampant inflation.

Many people have gotten rich by writing books pointing out the situation but this is just a matter of overstating the obvious.

In the end some of you will die young from malnutrition and others will die young from obesity, while others will die just trying to make sure others have a better life style and there are others who just couldn't give a rats arrrrs whether the sun rises tomorrow as long as today is just tolerable.

You doomwatch merchants are so far up your crevaces that if by some miracle the world population halved itself overnight, which would mean everyone would have twice as much as they have now,( do the sums), do you honestly think all your problems would be solved?

No, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Why???? Because you have placed your destiny in the hands of a few people that by their estimation are the best thing since sliced bread and are determind to get and stay rich at the expense of the mob.

Which is just another way of saying that the human race as a whole does not know what time of day it is without some technical expert being employed at consultancy levels to inform them, and that information is subject to government approval for only a very few.

You humans will never "get it right", not while you've got a hole in your arrrrs.
Ian.

Handlewanker,

You should re-read my post on depolymerization, above.

I already anticipated your final solution. The "man as alien" crowd has been advocating genocide ever since their previous poster children, the poor and downtrodden workers, cast them off and told them to go rescue someone else, and so they had to adopt the environment as a victim to rescue from property rights, since the environment can't talk back. Except when the world doesn't end, and temperatures drop instead of rising.

Oh, and as long as there is a debt-based fiat currency system in place, a continually expanding market has to exist just for it to stay afloat. At the end of the game, the banks and the government end up with all the money and title to all the property.

Have a nice day,

--97T--

"You humans will never "get it right", not while you've got a hole in your arrrrs."
--Ian.

Us humans kneel in your presence, oh great and wise alien who has spawned few offspring.

The Final Solution advocated above is being put into practice.

See my post about it here:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=445334#post445334

--97T--