A Skeptics Guide To Debunking Global Warming Alarmism

[Mman2000]

First off, like many people here I don't buy the whole "OH MY FUCKING GOD THE WORLD IS OVERHEATING IT'S ALL HUMANS FAULT AND IF WE DON'T STOP DRVING SUVS THE WORLD WILL INCINERATE US ALL" bullshit from Al Gore or any other enviro activist.

So, you're attacking the messenger with a knee jerk reaction?

 

Exactly what are you referring to, I thought I was saying that the message needed to stop being negative and alarmist.

[Ouroboros]

Have to agree with Han. I agree that global warming is happening. From what I've read, I suspect it's a combo of humans + natural causes. I wonder if changing now would really help it though. Plus there's no way you can get everyone on earth to change; there will always be people who are unwilling to give up old technology, at least until they die off. Even if we all turned into non-religious versions of the Amish, and gave up electricity + gas + other modern conveniences, would that even reverse the effects?

IIRC China and Africa will be the sources of most of our pollution for the coming years and not America, so what can we do but stop them from becoming industrialized (which could be seen as immoral and unethical since it would imply we want to maintain current differences). We're in a bind, and either we (potentially) save the world and make enemies, or we make friends and destroy the world and still make enemies.

 

I guess the only solution that would have any effect at all would be to eradicate a majority of the world’s population. Since the humans are the true virus destroying our Earth. And of course that is a very extreme and shocking idea, and very immoral.

 

Another solution would be to figure out interstellar space-drive and start settlements on other planets and unload the planet of people. Would be more moral, but it's in a distant future. All might collapse before we get there.

[Ouroboros]

I heard on the news this morning that the top dogs of several corporations are calling on President Bush to take steps against global warming. Stricter caps on emissions, and such. Sorry I can't give lots of details, as I was driving at the time and couldn't take notes. It seems that if big business is getting worried enough to want the government to take action, then something must be up. Or is there some sort of profit to be made by the corporations in all of this?

Of course there is. More consultants, specialists, lawyers, scientists, construction workers, material manufacturing etc, everyone will have more work, and there's money, but there's no drive for anyone to start and lead the way since there will be a lot of cost up-front before it starts to pay off.

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

Good job Dave! I was planning on doing something like that when solar panels, geothermal heating and cooling, and the like get cheaper and wind technology advances more.

I've come up with a new idea (though I doubt I'm the first) for radiant floor heating; on the south facing side of my house will be lots of windows letting sunlight in on a large cement slab. This slab will have the tubes in it for the radiant floor heating. On cold, but sunny, days the sunlight will heat the slab and I can then circulate that heat throughout the house via the RFH system. On days that won't work I could still use the geothermal. During the summer the sun is higher in the sky and the roof overhang will prevent sunlight from reaching the slab. A simple, low energy, evaporative cooler will keep the house cold enough, if it is needed.

 

Info on Radiant Floor Heating.

Info on GeoThermal Heat Pumps.

 

It seems they're pretty cheap now.

 

Are you going to use water in the tubes?

[Dave]

Exactly what are you referring to, I thought I was saying that the message needed to stop being negative and alarmist.

"Enviro alarmist" is a pejorative term.

Claiming "enviro" are "against" everything is a knee jerk argument. I'm sorry if we're against pollution and the further, needless, degradation of our environment.

No one has asked you to give up your video games.

"Environmentalist whack job" is another pejorative.

The "bad" that some are doing has to be pointed out, and dealt with in a reasonable manner, so that along with the "good" we can make progress.

 

Here is an example;

 

The bad - some forests in the North West, and I'm sure someone up there can confirm this, are hundreds of thousands of acres of "dog hair" forests. Before modern logging methods became standard practice they clear cut and left it alone. I'm not sure if these areas were replanted or not.... but anyway, the forest regrew with the trees inches apart. You can barely walk though it it's so thick. It's also a sterile forest, nothing lives there. It has to come out.

 

Reasonable solution: mow it down and pulp it or make fuel out of it. I'd like to see it made into pellets for my stove if it would bring the price down. Then, with help from the gov at first* , replant the forest so that I can be happy that Bambi is happy and the loggers can be happy by making the whole area into a sustainable logging area.

 

Everyone is happy, loggers get wood to cut for many years, "enviro nut jobs" are happy because Bambi is happy, and people get wood to make their homes with.

 

Another example:

 

Bad: burning rice stubble.

 

Solution: Rice straw bale housing.

 

Everyone is happy: we all get clean air to breathe, people get nice warm houses, rice growers get to sell something they used to burn.

 

So, what's wrong with pointing out the bad if a REASONABLE solution is offered? Giving up your vidiot games is not reasonable. Turning out the light when you leave a room is.

 

 

*The loggers that caused the problem are long gone and I don't see why todays logging companies should have to pay for someone else's mistakes.

[Dave]

Are you going to use water in the tubes?

Re: radiant floor heating

 

I'm not sure yet. What ever it is will have to have to be safe if it leaks. I have more research to do.

[Amethyst]

Another solution would be to figure out interstellar space-drive and start settlements on other planets and unload the planet of people. Would be more moral, but it's in a distant future. All might collapse before we get there.

 

We're going to have to do that anyway eventually, might as well start planning for it now.

[The Sage Nabooru]

The real question isn't "what bad are humans doing to the environment?", it's "what good can humans do for it?".

 

I have to admit this is one big problem I have with the enviromentalist alarmists. National Geographic is a big one. I love that magazine like a brother, but in almost every issue now there's at least one article going into detail about how some ecosystem is going to hell, how we (Americans and Europeans, in our big fat materialist ways) are responsible - and what follows is a paragraph or two detailing how every possible solution thought up cannot and will not work.

 

I remember one that was on the amount of farming acreage every person uses in their lifetime. For the evil industrialized countries, their people were using too much and the poor impoverished countries, their people too little. But ultimately the point of the article was that there just wasn't enough acreage to feed everybody, period; no matter what plans were put into effect, the current world population could not be supported.

 

Okay, NG, so who do we kill? If there's no way the Earth can feed all of us, I guess we'll just have to slaughter some fat sloppy Americans and perhaps some British too - in fact, let's kill off everybody who lives comfortably, so the oppressed masses of uneducated subsistence farmers can take their rightful place at the head of world domination. Since no other solution can be implemented.

 

Last time it was an article on the rainforest. Yes, it's being hacked to pieces, but instead of informing us of the futility of even trying to save it, why not stop thinking that the situation is hopeless and try thinking up an actual solving of the problem, or at least some help to remedy it somewhat.

[Amethyst]

 

IMO, it's only a matter of time before some terrorist does something stupid with a nuke or something else anyway. We probably won't have to worry about overpopulation then, at least for a while.

 

Yeah, I'm a bit pessimistic about things like that. But then 9/11 did actually happen.

[necrosmith]

Bush acknowledged climate change in his SotU speech tonight.

 

What will Rush say?

[Mr. XC]

So what are our thoughts on the credibility of this source or sources (not forbes.com, but the sources mentioned in the article, such as the 600 scientists with reviews from 600 experts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc) vs. some other sources for climate change / global warming out there?

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/01/22/ap3350500.html

 

It looks like it will be released via an 12-page summary edited by bureaucrats for policymakers in a little over a week, and the report from the scientists (hopefully unedited) will follow after a couple of months.

[Vigile]

Are you going to use water in the tubes?

Re: radiant floor heating

 

I'm not sure yet. What ever it is will have to have to be safe if it leaks. I have more research to do.

 

My father did something like this in the 1970s. He tried to capitalize on the energy crisis back then by starting a solar heating business. Alt energy never took off, so of course the business failed. Our solar house was a success though and it is still in operation for its current residents now 30 years later.

 

We had solar panels covering the entire roof on the South facing direction. Water was pumped from a large tank in the basement through tubing in the roof. The tubing then wound its way through the floors of the house. It used to cost us $7/month to run the pumps and that was the total cost of our heating bill.

[StewartP]

Are you going to use water in the tubes?

Re: radiant floor heating

 

I'm not sure yet. What ever it is will have to have to be safe if it leaks. I have more research to do.

I've installed a few of these for people.

 

The pipes shouldn't leak. The pipes are continuous segments, no joins. they get connected to a manifold. The whole system gets pressure tested. Then a concrete slab is poured over them. Should have a lifetime guarantee. I've never heard of one leaking.

 

They run at a much lower temperature than radiators. Which makes sense, otherwise you'd burn your feet on the floor!! It's the huge (relatively) surface area at a low heat that heats the room so effectively. If there are certain rooms in the house where underfloor heating is not a possibility you can still fit traditional radiators and have a clever box on the boiler that sends 20degC water to the floor and 60degC water to the radiators.

 

The cool thing about under floor is there are no radiators, so the room looks neater. And it is sheer luxury to get out of bed and put your unslippered feet onto a warm floor.

[Lunar Shadow]

Well here is some more fuel for the fire since environmentalists claim that Ethanol is the answer I would have to say think again Ethanol Takes MORE ENERGY to produce than it gives as a fuel not to mention that some studies show that when burned it causes more pollution than Gasoline so this seems to be another half thought out idea by the environmental movement. much like MTBE. take a read if you'd like

 

 

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&am...930049820810858

[Dave]

So what are our thoughts on the credibility of this source or sources (not forbes.com, but the sources mentioned in the article, such as the 600 scientists with reviews from 600 experts.....

I have absolutely no doubt that many will dismiss them outright as "environmental extremists."

[Dave]

The pipes shouldn't leak. The pipes are continuous segments, no joins. they get connected to a manifold. The whole system gets pressure tested. Then a concrete slab is poured over them. Should have a lifetime guarantee. I've never heard of one leaking.

They may not leak, but the place will eventually be destroyed somehow. Pure water can have it's carrying capacity increased by the addition of certain chemicals. What about that new "anti-freeze" for cars that's supposed to be safer than the old kind? Would that work?

The cool thing about under floor is there are no radiators, so the room looks neater. And it is sheer luxury to get out of bed and put your unslippered feet onto a warm floor.

And I hear that when connected to geothermal they cost very little to operate. I'm on propane and I want to use a tankless water heater which I assume would not be useful for radiant floor heating.

[Dave]

Well here is some more fuel for the fire since environmentalists claim that Ethanol is the answer....

Only an "environmentalist" that has rocks for brains would say that. Most know that it's expensive right now, and that they could not plant enough biomass to make enough Ethanol to replace the amount of gasoline that we now use. There is no one thing that can replace what we get from oil. It will have to be a combination of many different energy sources.

 

And if the figures you presented were based on the work of David Pimentel then you have to do the exact same thing for gasoline. He figured in EVERY little bit that went into the production of Ethanol; the tractor and the energy it took to make the tractor, drive it, and all the energy used to build the ethanol plant, and even the energy the humans exerted to do all the work required. If all that was done to gasoline, it would come out looking worse than Ethanol.

[Lunar Shadow]

And if the figures you presented were based on the work of David Pimentel then you have to do the exact same thing for gasoline. He figured in EVERY little bit that went into the production of Ethanol; the tractor and the energy it took to make the tractor, drive it, and all the energy used to build the ethanol plant, and even the energy the humans exerted to do all the work required. If all that was done to gasoline, it would come out looking worse than Ethanol.

 

 

 

And Where is your source that shows that they do not take everything in to account for the production of gasoline?? because I have read studies that do take it in to account and they come to the same conclusion that the study I posted do. SOURCE YOUR WORK!

[Dave]

SOURCE YOUR WORK!

It was in a text book I read long ago. If that's not sufficient then I leave the problem in your hands.

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

Well here is some more fuel for the fire since environmentalists claim that Ethanol is the answer....

Only an "environmentalist" that has rocks for brains would say that. Most know that it's expensive right now, and that they could not plant enough biomass to make enough Ethanol to replace the amount of gasoline that we now use. There is no one thing that can replace what we get from oil. It will have to be a combination of many different energy sources.

 

And if the figures you presented were based on the work of David Pimentel then you have to do the exact same thing for gasoline. He figured in EVERY little bit that went into the production of Ethanol; the tractor and the energy it took to make the tractor, drive it, and all the energy used to build the ethanol plant, and even the energy the humans exerted to do all the work required. If all that was done to gasoline, it would come out looking worse than Ethanol.

 

It's also funny that he mentioned grasses. I hope he is not meaning feed grasses, there is a huge shortage right now and some farm animals in the midwest are starving to death.

[Lunar Shadow]

SOURCE YOUR WORK!

It was in a text book I read long ago. If that's not sufficient then I leave the problem in your hands.

 

 

I am not going to do your work for you... you raise an objection you should beable to back it up with an accessible source, I mean hell this is the internet so try running a search.

[Mr. XC]

SOURCE YOUR WORK!

It was in a text book I read long ago. If that's not sufficient then I leave the problem in your hands.

I am not going to do your work for you... you raise an objection you should beable to back it up with an accessible source, I mean hell this is the internet so try running a search.

I am not sure if this off topic discussion warrants having sources listed for everything, but it is reasonable to post a source upon request. I do take issue with forcing people to take what they have from a book and spend more time to find a matching source on the Internet. Not all research that is published in books are on the Internet. As an extreme example, take "The Early Church Fathers," I am sure I can find plenty of stuff within its 22,896 pages that are not on the Internet. Anyway, I think that we would rule out plenty of good sources if all sources had to be on the Internet. The Internet is more likely to contain some junk data anyway (I am reminded of Christin apologists who base their arguments from other web sites who based their arguments on other web sites which came from someone's opinion). While books can certainly contain errors in them, I think the average quality of Internet material is less than most books. There is something about having to spend money to use a printing press that encourages publishers to check their work more so than posting something on a web site.

[Dave]

It's also funny that he mentioned grasses. I hope he is not meaning feed grasses, there is a huge shortage right now and some farm animals in the midwest are starving to death.

He was probably talking about switch grass, a darling of the biofuels salesmen. I know how those farmers feel. I have trouble getting quality feed here in Calif.

[Dave]

I am not going to do your work for you...

And I'm not going to do your work for you. If you don't like my figures, then I'm sorry. Just because they disagree with the oil companies figures doesn't mean they are wrong.

 

Also, too many times I've taken the bait and spent a lot of time finding the info someone demanded only to have them reject it anyway. I've learned my lesson.

[JGJ@ReligionisBullshit]

I am not going to do your work for you...

And I'm not going to do your work for you. If you don't like my figures, then I'm sorry. Just because they disagree with the oil companies figures doesn't mean they are wrong.

 

Also, too many times I've taken the bait and spent a lot of time finding the info someone demanded only to have them reject it anyway. I've learned my lesson.

 

Even the DOE says that Ethanol is more expensive to produce than gasoline but there are tax incentives that reduces its end price to make it a viable alternative.

 

http://www.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/blends/pdfs/37135.pdf