Twisted agenda

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news...ya.UN.Mercury/

Interesting. Didn't the United States just issue a future ban on old light bulbs in favor of newer bulbs requiring less energy? However those newer light bulbs have enough mercury in them to warrant an EPA cleanup in your house should a few break open.

Seems to me that someone somewhere in government or the EPA is very confused about their own agenda.

From the EPA:
http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/w...mps/faqs.htm#6
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm#whatnever


And many of you have probably heard the recent news article about warming accelerating. Convenient play since we have just had severe storms recently in the U.S (which is nothing new in February/March time frame), Australian fires (which are more and more pointing to arson), and odd weather events in Vegas.
http://www.examiner.com/x-219-Denver...-alarming-rate

Yet the founder of the Weather Channel does not quite agree:
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemans.../38609397.html

But then again he is probably being funded by Big Oil. :)
But since Opec just had to cut world production by 50% to make a profit perhaps these 'deniers' aren't making much money anymore if they are funded by oil big wigs which I doubt seriously that they are. Horrible argument that every time someone gets evidence contrary to warming that somehow they are involved in some huge oil conspiracy to hide the truth. Utterly absurd.

The whole scam seems to be falling apart. Now they are recanting calling it climate change or warming but not necessarily man made. Hogwash. The entire movement stated they believed in man made global warming caused by an increase in CO2 and yet now they change their story when it becomes inconvenient.

I did not know that the United States banned them, but I knew that the EU recently placed a ban on incandescents, which I am strongly against. (The ban, that is)
Flourescents last a long time, but not forever. They burn out infrequently enough that most people will not bother recycling them, but if every household is using them, a significant number will end up in landfills, leaking mercury (and a few other nasties in smaller amounts).

I am sick of this global warming alarmism. We are willing to pollute our water to reduce our "carbon footprint" (I hate that term) and MW-h of energy per year.

I don't understand.

The epa recommends CFLs in part because the energy they save means a reduction in mercury emissions from power plants, making an overall reduction in mercury in the environment (according to your first epa link). So how is the agenda confusing? (Note: this pdf indicates that using an incandescent bulb leads to over 3 times as much mercury in the environment as a CFL, assuming that CFL is not recycled.)

>> And many of you have probably heard the recent news article about warming accelerating. Convenient play since we have just had severe storms recently... <<
You're inferring conspiracy where none exists. When would it have been appropriate for an amateur meteorologist to write an article about a press release from Feb 14 coinciding with the presentation of findings by a scientist at a symposium that same day?

As for the rest of your post, you use the term "they" a lot. Who are "they"?

Ah, another Bubba conspiracy rant. It has been awhile since the last one hasn't it?

I played with mercury as a kid. I'm fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sean

I played with mercury as a kid. I'm fine.

---

Yes, metallic (liquid) mercury is RELATIVELY harmless - it will accumulate in your body and your brain will be damaged eventually. But organic mercury compounds is really what you need to watch out for - they are HIGHLY dangerous and much quicker to get into cells and do damage than metallic mercury. That is what happens if you have organic compounds, mercury and high temperature in the same place at the same time - such as burning mercury based products.

The same, by the way, applies to lead. Metallic lead is relatively harmless [unless it comes flying at you from a gun], but organic lead compounds are definitely bad news - this is what happens when you burn leaded fuel in a car engine, for example.

--
Mats

Quote:

---

When would it have been appropriate for an amateur meteorologist to write an article about a press release from Feb 14 coinciding with the presentation of findings by a scientist at a symposium that same day?

---

I'm afraid I don't follow. Who is the amateur meteorologist here? The scientific finding was not scientific at all.

Quote:

---

Ah, another Bubba conspiracy rant. It has been awhile since the last one hasn't it?

---

Only because another report was issues stating that warming is accelerating even amidst several reports that many feel that warming has completely stopped.

I really don't care one way or the other as long as we don't pass expensive policies to curb something that isn't a problem. I would agree that chemical pollution is definitely something we must stop however stopping the emissions of a trace gas that also occurs naturally in the atmosphere is not something I can buy into.

And there is a conspiracy when one side says the debate is over when in science the debate is never over nor does a consensus mean anything. There is a conspiracy when language such as denier and believer are used for issues that are supposed to be scientific. That doesn't sound like science to me.

Let's hope Obama's supposed 'green jobs' work even if we do not have the economy for it nor the technology to replace a third of the energy produced by current methods.

And besides I'm just happy that I am actually talking about something other than code. It means there is hope for me to actually have a life. A very small hope but it's there.

>> I'm afraid I don't follow. <<

Your implication is that the linked article from the "Denver Weather Examiner" is part of a larger conspiracy to convince people that climate change is real, man-made, and needs to be addressed. If this is not what you meant, please explain what you meant by the statement I quoted.

Here are the reasons that I disagree with that implication:

1. An article was written by an amateur meteorologist from Denver, Tony Hake. (I hesitate to call it an article, it seems more like a blog, but either way I'll continue.) How is this relevant? Why does this random article by someone who appears to be a nobody matter? Is this person important? Is that site widely read? Is the same article repeated many other places?

2. That article appears to be based on the press release it refers to at the bottom. That press release was dated February 14. It refers to a presentation at the annual meeting of AAAS on February 14 by IPCC scientist Chris Field of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. Your inference was that the timing of the article might have been meant to coincide with some incidents of extreme weather to take advantage of the possible link. But it would seem obvious that the article was posted based on the press release, and that press release was published based on the presentation, and that presentation was timed based on the timing of the annual meeting. So I have no idea why anybody would think that anything about the timing of any of it was suspect.

3. You have twice misstated the content of the article. It does not state that warming is accelerating. It states that the level of gases that cause global warming is increasing.


>> Only because another report was issues stating that warming is accelerating even amidst several reports that many feel that warming has completely stopped. <<

But why is the report that says that the level of greenhouse gases has increased the one that makes you think conspiracy? Is it not just as likely that the reports that warming has completely stopped are part of a conspiracy? BTW, what reports are those? Do you have links or references?

(Wherein I ramble and eventually do some math...)

I'm not sure why people argue about this.

It is an undergraduate level calculation to determine the change in the thermal energy of Earth's surface given a certain change in CO2 concentration.

Okay, that's one piece of evidence. Now correlate the changes in atmospheric CO2 with the changes in mean surface temperature over the last 150 years. You get a pretty high correlation coefficient.

The only piece of the puzzle remaining is to determine if humans are responsible for the increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Personally, I don't see the point in bothering to find the answer, when there are simple things I can do which reduce my total CO2 output and actually save me money. It's bizarre that so many people are willing to literally burn up the Earth's natural resources.

Okay, so what if we could burn all the oil in all the reservoirs in the world, and not cause climate impacts? What will we do when we run out of that energy source? We could do an awful lot with nuclear. So let's suppose we have an infinite amount of nuclear energy. How do we get this energy into vehicles? Okay, battery-powered cars are already here. We know they work.

What about battery powered airplanes? How exactly are we going to continue air travel if we run out of petroleum? Shall we put nuclear reactors on airplanes, which are known to crash? Shall we invent a battery-powered airplane?

Okay, let's look at what it would take to make a battery-powered airplane. Your loaded 747 will take off at about 850,000 pounds. It takes off at 180 miles per hour. It takes about 20 seconds to accelerate and leave the runway.

850,000 pounds moving 180 miles per hour is about 1.25 gigajoules. This energy is expended in 20 seconds, for an average takeoff power of 62.4 megawatts.

And we're just talking about the energy to accelerate, not generate lift. At 850,000 pounds, a 747 requires 1.15 megajoules for each FOOT it climbs. Suppose you climb 500 feet per minute. That's 9.6 megawatts required to climb.

So we'll need to build batteries which can not only sustain flight for a 12 hour period but are capable of delivering peak power of about 60 megawatts.

Good luck with that...

>> Australian fires (which are more and more pointing to arson)

BTW, I ran across this blog entry when reading another discussion of global warming. It attempts to address the question of what impact (if any) climate change had on the fires in Australia: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...s-and-climate/

Consider reading it with an open mind and an assumption that the author is not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.

Well if we run out of jet fuel, we could always start flying in blimps.
I can just see it now. An entire Air Force made of blimps... :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brewbuck

f the puzzle remaining is to determine if humans are responsible for the increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Personally, I don't see the point in bothering to find the answer, when there are simple things I can do which reduce my total CO2 output and actually save me money. It's bizarre that so many people are willing to literally burn up the Earth's natural resources.

---

I generally stand on the "humans don't represent a dramatic impact in the weather patterns" side of the argument. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence that this is, in fact, cyclical. Two, because the two large components in the global warming debate are the two "hockey stick" graphs that have been mainly disproved (one has, anyway) and are both no longer recognized by the IPCC or the WMO or most other major weather authorities. Finally, three because plenty of scientific data show the carbon rise following the temperature rise... anyway, this is just random data I'm throwing off the top of my head.

That said, I switched to CFL bulbs years ago, have driven a fairly low-emission vehicle for years, and have genuinely looked into private solar power. There are plenty of people on this side of the table who have done that same... the issue is not being more environmentally friendly, it's the cost at which we do it. There has been plenty of attempts to pull budgeting from what I believe is more important components of the national budget, such as homeland defense and veteran pensions. Naturally, the original terms of the Kyoto protocol would have hurt industry and forced much industry to pull production to India and China that were exempt from the bill. Unfortunately, not all things that push us towards environmental friendliness are cost-effective. The analogy is I like to make is that the global warming people are trying to fix a leak in the roof when there is still two walls that need to be put up. It's less of a question of "should be be environmentally friendly" than a question of "how far can we afford to be environmentally friendly."

Just my two cents.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daved

Consider reading it with an open mind and an assumption that the author is not trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes.

---

Open-mind, sure... but I wouldn't ever suggest that someone assumes they aren't being screwed by someone. After all, I think an open-mind is one that considers the possibility that what they're being told is possibly untrue.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

I generally stand on the "humans don't represent a dramatic impact in the weather patterns" side of the argument. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence that this is, in fact, cyclical.

---

Historically, weather patterns(planet warming) have been cyclical, and will remain so if nature is left to run it's own course.

But humans have been injected into the equation. This is a first instance of artificial emissions on this planet, so the impact has not cyclical.

natural weather patterns(cyclical) + increasing artifical emissions(first instance) = ?

An analogy is a perfectly balanced scale. Then a bird lands on one side, and tips the balance.

Without an identically weighted bird on the other side(in our case, 100% reduction in what we emit(impossible)), the scale will tilt, but how much, and how fast?.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sean

I played with mercury as a kid. I'm fine.

---

Yeah me too, I used to roll it around in my hand. I also used to eat after shooting guns (lead), ride my bike with no helmet (my first near death experience was from a bike accident), run with sharp sticks, tease the neighbors german shephard, jump the railroad tracks when a train was coming, go swimming after eating, wore white after labor day, enlist in the Army when Desert Storm was brewing, fax laser guided missile designs and uranium refinement techniques to arab embassies (yes part of the patriot act was written specifically for me), grow marijuana in my apartment, tell the FBI to go ........ themselves, turn down an offer you can't refuse, teach my computer to kill people, and ....

I wrote an artificial intelligence to destabilize the world economy through distributed micro-transaction sequences. The butterfly effect FTL.

Just wait for the big finale, its gonna be awesomely awesome :devil:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bubba

And there is a conspiracy when one side says the debate is over when in science the debate is never over nor does a consensus mean anything. There is a conspiracy when language such as denier and believer are used for issues that are supposed to be scientific. That doesn't sound like science to me.

---

There comes a point when meaningful debate is over, e.g.

1. The Earth is Round vs The Earth is Flat
2. Creation vs Evolution
3. Hole Flow vs Electron Flow

There will always remain a few 'true believers' that insist the debate is not over yet, simply because they refuse to accept that the debate is over but not in their favor.

>> because the two large components in the global warming debate are the two "hockey stick" graphs that have been mainly disproved (one has, anyway) <<

Just curious, but do you have any references to them being disproved? A very quick search led me to this page, although that is almost five years old:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php...-hockey-stick/


>> Open-mind, sure... but I wouldn't ever suggest that someone assumes they aren't being screwed by someone. After all, I think an open-mind is one that considers the possibility that what they're being told is possibly untrue. <<

My comment made sense in reference to Bubba. My impression is that he is convinced that any argument backing the idea of human-caused climate change is just a devious attempt to trick people. In that case opening his mind means considering the possibility that the article is above board. I was going further and asking him to basically assume it was, even though that might be difficult to do, because if he can do that he might see it from another perspective.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SlyMaelstrom

I generally stand on the "humans don't represent a dramatic impact in the weather patterns" side of the argument. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence that this is, in fact, cyclical. Two, because the two large components in the global warming debate are the two "hockey stick" graphs that have been mainly disproved (one has, anyway) and are both no longer recognized by the IPCC or the WMO or most other major weather authorities. Finally, three because plenty of scientific data show the carbon rise following the temperature rise... anyway, this is just random data I'm throwing off the top of my head.

---

I don't reference the hockey sticks for the reasons you state. I'm just looking at the raw correlation between CO2 and global mean temperature. While it's true that the graph seems to show CO2 lagging behind mean temperature change, that's not enough to discount causality.

One thing I've learned from DSP is that it's possible to construct a filter which seems acausal -- it seems to shift signals forward in time. In fact, it's not that difficult to do so. Of course, it's not really shifting anything forward in time (that's impossible), the filter is just predictive. If the input signal veers from the domain the filter can predict, it ceases the illusion of being acausal and enters wild oscillations.

I won't go so far to say that the Earth is such a filter, but the fact that they exist means we can't just look at the graphs and say it's not possible that CO2 is actually the cause instead of the effect.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by daved

Just curious, but do you have any references to them being disproved?

---

I don't want to be rude, but the truth is that I don't have any immediate references to cite that disproves the hockey stick graphs and I really am uninterested to search for it to make this point... I'm just not that interested. The basic gist of it is that the formula used to generate the most well-known versions of the "hockey sticks" is designed such that any input would yeild the hockey stick shape. It's been tested with constant data and it still makes hockey-sticks.

If you are curious... the only reference I can give you is Michael Chrichton's address to Congress on global warming. He cites this and I'm sure gives references... not to mention he's a doctor that could explain this well better than I have above. I hope it's enough to get you started cause I can see you're interested in this whole topic and I wouldn't want to leave you hanging without some sort of substance to my argument.

Brewbuck, you know what you're talking about, but from what I'm seeing in your points is that you're just not certain about anything. You seem to have a very moderate view point that the evidence shows it "could" be this or that. This is accetable, of course, but my question to you is how much time and money should the government set aside on this limited certainty when there are definite problems out there that could make better use of the money?

Interestingly enough, I'm not that interested to do a lot of research either. I was just curious whether you had read or seen something specific or if that was just something you had heard or read a long time ago but didn't remember details of. The information you provided about Crichton and the constant data making a hockey stick is actually more information than I expected. Maybe if I'm bored later or this conversation continues I'll look it up.


As to making better use of the money, I've seen people say (and it makes sense to me) that there are plenty of ancillary benefits. So if the bulk of the scientific community say it's a serious problem, then even if you're not convinced I would still think it is worth spending money to try to fix it even if the end result is just the ancillary benefits.

Good discussion and thanks for keeping it a debate and not resorting to personal attacks. I really don't think there is a conspiracy per se on the side of the scientists. I do think key politicians have manipulated it to their own ends to gain more control of various sectors of public policy. Of course we cannot blame the scientists for that since politicians have been manipulating data to further their own agenda since the dawn of man. Ok maybe not that long but soon after.

As well I do think the mass media has been irresponsible in their broadcasts of the various stories concerning warming/cooling and ...pretty much every story they ever broadcast. So for news you either get extreme left or extreme right (for TV, internet, radio, etc). I've heard PBS has good factual news but I don't listen to them that often. I do like Lou Dobbs, however, not so much because he is neither left nor right or even b/c of his ideas, but because he is at least different than all the other junk you see and hear on CNN (regular CNN), MSNBC, FOX, etc. A breath of fresh air in a stagnant news and political climate.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brewbuck

I don't reference the hockey sticks for the reasons you state. I'm just looking at the raw correlation between CO2 and global mean temperature. While it's true that the graph seems to show CO2 lagging behind mean temperature change, that's not enough to discount causality.

---

Rising temperatures will cause a rise in CO2. Higher temperatures increase the reate fo errosion of rocks and mineral formations, which contain large amoutns of geological CO2 embedded in them. There is no mystery here. Deforestation will cause an increase in surface albedo which results in LOWER subsurface temperatures as more of the suns energy is reflected back into space. It also reduces the rate at which CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere. So deforrestation may be a cause of the increased CO2 levels remaining, but they are not the root cause of the initial temperature increase. The increased levels of CO2 are not even close to the amount necessary to sustain an increased rate of CO2 generation from geological deposits. Remember that the rate of CO2 absorbtion by plants at concentrations between 120 and 5000 ppm is very nearly a linear relationship based on concentration level. That is, a given biospheres plants, at 500 ppm, will absorb CO2 at twice the rate they will at 250 ppm. While we as human like to think that we are the masters of teh earth, adn that all oru acions have profound and important effects, it just isn't so. Total human CO2 production per anum barely reaches a double digit percentage of the CO2 generated from geological activity in a single day. The simple fact is that there is nothing we can or need to do to stop the increase in CO2. Geologic activity has been increasing over the last 10 thousand years as a natural cycle in the cores 54k year thermonuclear cycle. It will peak in another ~17k years and then begin to decrease.

Deforestation and polution are still a bad thing, as it leads to desertification which reduces the arable land, and toxic chemicals in drinking water and food supplies.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by abachler

Rising temperatures will cause a rise in CO2. Higher temperatures increase the reate fo errosion of rocks and mineral formations, which contain large amoutns of geological CO2 embedded in them. There is no mystery here.

---

I don't think it's a mystery as much as something that can never be proven one way or the other. The universe is not the sort of place where you can say "A caused B." Everything causes everything else. Look at the "butterfly effect." Yes, it's true that in a chaotic system, small changes can lead to massively different states, but is it really fair to say the butterfly "caused" a hurricane? At some point everything becomes an entanglement of global state, and you can't really ascribe causality to any one event.

Quote:

---

Total human CO2 production per anum barely reaches a double digit percentage of the CO2 generated from geological activity in a single day.

---

I've never seen a legitimate reference that convinced me of that, but I'll of course give you the benefit of asking where you know that from.

Quote:

---

The simple fact is that there is nothing we can or need to do to stop the increase in CO2. Geologic activity has been increasing over the last 10 thousand years as a natural cycle in the cores 54k year thermonuclear cycle. It will peak in another ~17k years and then begin to decrease.

---

The strange thing about this statement is that you give very precise numbers, which means you put faith in (certain sectors of) scientists to provide very accurate models. Yet there are other scientists providing models which predict dire circumstances. I wonder how you select which exact predictions to pay attention to and which ones to discount.

Quote:

---

Deforestation and polution are still a bad thing, as it leads to desertification which reduces the arable land, and toxic chemicals in drinking water and food supplies.

---

What about, it makes the Earth look and feel like crap? I have more things to care about in life than pure survival. If my environment is ugly (and sure, that's subjective, but something a whole lot of humans at least loosely agree on), the quality of my life is adversely affected. I like forests not only because of their effects on water tables but because they're beautiful, and I enjoy walking in them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brewbuck

What about, it makes the Earth look and feel like crap? I have more things to care about in life than pure survival. If my environment is ugly (and sure, that's subjective, but something a whole lot of humans at least loosely agree on), the quality of my life is adversely affected. I like forests not only because of their effects on water tables but because they're beautiful, and I enjoy walking in them.

---

I like cities better than forests -- too many creepy crawlies in forests. That's why I live here and the trees live out there. :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by brewbuck

I've never seen a legitimate reference that convinced me of that, but I'll of course give you the benefit of asking where you know that from.

---

Whether you are convinced or not is irrelevant, there are people who are still convinced that some supernatural sky daddy created the space time continuum by uttering 4 words. However, for your edification here are a few documents that should let you get started on forming an informed opinion.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1988/87JD00743.shtml
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_gr_mlo.txt
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electri...t/co2emiss.pdf
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Re...III-Berner.pdf
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php
http://kirj.ee/public/oilshale_pdf/2...-4-465-484.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...cad1eef214d984
http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/....0.CO%3B2&ct=1
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emi...co2_human.html

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bubba

Australian fires (which are more and more pointing to arson),

---

As was pointed out, the severity of the fires is due to an extended heat wave in Victoria.

Without the heatwave the damage would have been no where near as extensive.

That said, bushfires in my state can burn more area than the UK and not hit a homestead (few rail structures).

Except this year that area (the Pilbara) is currently flooded. It is comming up to cyclone season but Ihave not seen it this bad in the last two decades.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bubba

Yet the founder of the Weather Channel does not quite agree

---

Who is John Coleman apart from being a TV weatherman?
What scientific credentials or qualifications does he have?
What research did he do to support his opinion?
Where does he reference those studies?
Does he have a conflict of interest? (He profits in stiring up as much climate change debate as possible, as he has a finacial interest in weather journalism.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by abachler

Whether you are convinced or not is irrelevant, there are people who are still convinced that some supernatural sky daddy created the space time continuum by uttering 4 words. However, for your edification here are a few documents that should let you get started on forming an informed opinion.

---

You're comparing my skepticism with a belief in a "sky daddy?" Come on.

I looked at your references, and none of them answers my question. How many gigatons of CO2 are produced through geological events per annum, vs. how many gigatons are produced by human activity?