Climate Change

[jetpilot]

The main thin in "carbon emissions" that are glossed over by journo\'s who don\'t ever understand science is that we have been digging up carbon ( in oil/coal/gas/peat) locked in the earth and burning it thus creating an unnatural imbalance demonstrated by the increase in CO2.
NO time in the past has any activity introduced such a huge amount in such a short time -- all driven by "man".
 
Second point I always smile about is the "name" causing confusion and argument.
"warming" etc etc. The average temp is rising, that means some areas may well have weather patters which for their area is colder ! YES, these have all existed and occurred before. But this time we are accelerating the process so the natural balances that have "protected" our atmosphere for billions of years cant/wont cope.
 
The science behind the projections are sound ... just that there are dozens of projections on the evidence collected and SOME are saying the opposite end results.
So no wonder journo\'s only seek headlines and not reasoned discourse on the topic. Hell the scientists can\'t even be objective about it all.
 
THAN add on top those with political agendas and the car owner is doomed
 
re what we can do, then not unreasonably suggesting we slow done the impact WE ADD to the planet by our actions can only be a good thing. Problem I have is some suggest it\'s a definitee certainty, it\'s not, only a probability and worse that a solution exists that is a definit certainty, it cant be, only a probability.
 
BUT, do I want all of the population of China and India consuming hydrocarbons and producing CO2 and other worse oxides at the same per capita rate as the US ? hell no ! Not even at our rate.
 
For me that\'s where the challenge is for us. If we don\'t do something to limit our consumption can we reasonably ask/expect others ? Personally I think our fuel costs already do that in the UK and the push by the ecologists to wind power is just a waste of time and money ( but WILL make some politicians and big businessees VERY successful )
 
Good point on the "adapt" the suggestion is we reduce the damage we cause which is WAY different from suggesting we are adapting it per se and we know we can\'t prevent major weather patterns

Are you a scientist?

[Competition PZ]

^ prefer "engineer" and not one happy to have BS paraded as "science".
Worked for major research lab tho\' and happy to have one of the strongest debunkers of the pseudo science crap as a close friend.
Don\'t get me started on the basics of the BS the wind energy faction promote
and yes blitzboy that para is a straight lift of the kind of language they use to say nothing but make it sound "important"
@dthbunk: burning wood is "reasonable" as it grows and you\'re only releasing carbon that was in the atmmosphere in the last 20-100 years. But we\'re digging up coal, oil and gas that has been stored for billions of years from our atmosphere. We\'ve released it in the last 200 years. It\'s that rate of extraction and burn that does seem to be "dangerous" logically ..... but you can find evidence to fully support that premise AND find evidence to disprove it depending on how you want to play the statistics. Common sense I\'d say tho suggests burning something that quickly and releasing it is not ideal ..... BUT there are a milion other things to do before we stop burning petrol in cars ( to be slightly on topic for a car forum )

[Skifledanabit]

I hate this entire topic...

means I usually go on a long rant about how unfair it is, try to give opinions etc...

ok, so;

the earth has an elliptical orbit around the sun, over the course of centuries and millenia, the earth shift closer and further away from the sun simply due to centrifugal force and gravity, hence making our world colder and warmer making Ice ages etc etc yady yada.

technically, any time there is ice at either cap, we are still in an ice age, the world has been around for billions of years and the different ice ages and, whats the other called, hot ages? change the face of this earth many many times.

The only reason we, as a species, are so concerned about it is because we are power hungry, we like to be in control, and because we cannot control the NATURAL progression of the earth as it spins closer and further away from the sun, we get all het up and start saying its our fault, we must do something about it.

the problem is, the government is presented with a "problem", their advisors tell them what to do/the easiest solution, it gets released to the press, we read a vastly edited version of a very one sided argument and then have to take the heat for it.

Yes, the oil may be running out, as with the rest of our natural (supposedly) resources, but does anyone think about how much it takes to charge up these lectric vehicles? and where that power comes from? ok you personally may not be making any more emissions, but the power station that supplies your electricity for your electric car is, probably a hell of a lot more than if you had a regular petrol/diesel/LPG car.

it all comes down to the greed of politicians at the end of the day, and their blatent stupidity and the fact we (the public) willingly bend over and take it, like lambs to the slaughter, we believe their bs science, the scaremongering, and the media/government drowns out (or worse *coughDr David Kellycough*) anyone who says otherwise or disproves the point that supplies their money.

but, why change the habit of a lifetime in the history of mankind, we have always been lied to by our leaders, ever since we were "cavemen".

[trotter]

^ prefer "engineer" and not one happy to have BS paraded as "science".
Worked for major research lab tho\' and happy to have one of the strongest debunkers of the pseudo science crap as a close friend.
Don\'t get me started on the basics of the BS the wind energy faction promote
and yes blitzboy that para is a straight lift of the kind of language they use to say nothing but make it sound "important"
@dthbunk: burning wood is "reasonable" as it grows and you\'re only releasing carbon that was in the atmmosphere in the last 20-100 years. But we\'re digging up coal, oil and gas that has been stored for billions of years from our atmosphere. We\'ve released it in the last 200 years. It\'s that rate of extraction and burn that does seem to be "dangerous" logically ..... but you can find evidence to fully support that premise AND find evidence to disprove it depending on how you want to play the statistics. Common sense I\'d say tho suggests burning something that quickly and releasing it is not ideal ..... BUT there are a milion other things to do before we stop burning petrol in cars ( to be slightly on topic for a car forum )

^^this bit.

As a fellow engineer who did a post-grad Masters in Sustainability Engineering, I have to agree that, from a strictly thermodynamic standpoint, the burning of fossil fuel for energy is PHENOMENALLY inefficient. When you look at the figures of a modern, state-of-the-art coal power plant and work out that you only get back (at best) ~35% of the energy you put in you can see how bad it actually is.

However, renewables are not the holy grail that everyone seems to think they are...

Although there is indeed enough power available in offshore wind around the coast of the UK to power us 1000x over, you have to look at the practical side of things:

1) The largest commercially-available wind turbine is around 5MW. Now assuming that it is 100% efficient (IIRC the Betz efficiency of a turbine is more around 65%) you will still need FOURTEEN THOUSAND to power the UK (at a power consumption of around 70GW).

2) To put these turbines in the North Sea (average depth ~100m) you need specialised ships to drop them to the sea bed, and then pile them a further 50m or so into the bed. There is only a limited number of these ships available and most are on long-term contracts already.

3) We all know turbines don\'t work when the wind is too low, but believe it or not, they also don\'t work when the wind is blowing too strongly - as it can damage the rotor assembly. So in reality there is a fairly narrow band of windspeed in which they can work. So in order to guarantee power supply you will need to build a significant factor MORE than the 14000 given in point 1).

4) Even then, we cannot 100% catagorically confirm that the wind will be blowing all the time. Therefore, because electricity storage (i.e. batteries) is also fairly useless on any great scale, we will need back-up supplies for industry / hospitals / etc, as we simply cannot run a society on the HOPE that there may be power available today. This will require the building of a fail-safe unit, a la a conventional power plant. So why not just build these in the first place?

Renewables are a nice idea, granted. However, they offer little use in a large scale practical application. The money would be much better spent (IMHO) on researching advances into hydrogen fuel cells and fusion power.

graeme

[Competition PZ]

Graeme, mate has a book from an engineering standpoint that totally debunks the windpower lunacy. The headline I remember is you have to fill EVERY mile of coastal britain with wind power to match the peak demand -- and hoep the wind is blowing when it comes
 
DO see a future for the lake district, scotland and wales though and use the mountain areas for pumped storage hydro systems when the greenies realise that wind and sun aren\'t 24/7 !!

[AtomicRex]

nuclear is the way forward!

[AtomicRex]

So are we just ticking boxes when it comes to reusable energy?  Is it just something to keep the greens and show we are looking at other methods.  Similar to how Aston have had to build that silly car just to show they have green credentials!
 
I was always led to believe that it would take 10-20 years to start turning a profit on the wind generators, and solar was similar.
 
Water is certainly a way forward, tidal energy is huge isn\'t it? Ive not yet understood why the seven estuary unit was canned...it seemed to be a great source of free energy that is completely guaranteed!

[Grant Monkhouse]

I have just thought of the beet solution to reduce emissions, create energy and solve obesity in this country.

Install a small wind turbine in every families garden and attach it by a belt to an exercise bike at the bottom, so in times of no or low wind, an obese person or a family member has to go out on the bike until they have created enough electricity back into the system for the amount used.

Not on my will this reduce emissions, and create free electricity, it will also reduce the costs that all of these fat b stards having gastric bands fitted and having their fat sucked out, freeing up funding for the NHS and also creating an elite nation of cyclists for such things as the olympics and world tournaments.

It\'s a win win situation.

I have thought about the ways in which people would cheat doing the exercise but I have thought of that solution too.

What does everyone think?

[Grant Monkhouse]

So are we just ticking boxes when it comes to reusable energy?  Is it just something to keep the greens and show we are looking at other methods.  Similar to how Aston have had to build that silly car just to show they have green credentials!
 
I was always led to believe that it would take 10-20 years to start turning a profit on the wind generators, and solar was similar.
 
Water is certainly a way forward, tidal energy is huge isn\'t it? Ive not yet understood why the seven estuary unit was canned...it seemed to be a great source of free energy that is completely guaranteed!

Solar panels are complete pants, in the time that you have them they only just start to pay for themselves before you have replace them, due to the life of the actual solar unit itself.

[AtomicRex]

I have just thought of the beet solution to reduce emissions, create energy and solve obesity in this country.
 
Install a small wind turbine in every families garden and attach it by a belt to an exercise bike at the bottom, so in times of no or low wind, an obese person or a family member has to go out on the bike until they have created enough electricity back into the system for the amount used.
 
Not on my will this reduce emissions, and create free electricity, it will also reduce the costs that all of these fat b stards having gastric bands fitted and having their fat sucked out, freeing up funding for the NHS and also creating an elite nation of cyclists for such things as the olympics and world tournaments.
 
It\'s a win win situation.
 
I have thought about the ways in which people would cheat doing the exercise but I have thought of that solution too.
 
What does everyone think?

This is a subject we have banded around the office of late!
 
Our idea was mainly centred towards prisoners....but I guess the same follows for your idea too!  We could use it for the job seekers, that would be useful!
 
They would need to achieve a quota for each and everyday.  If they weren\'t reaching the quota then they get a small electric shock!  Now this obviously would come out of their quota...thus meaning they had to pedal even harder so as not to get a slightly more powerful 2nd and 3rd shock.
 
You\'d soon get a job!

[trotter]

Graeme, mate has a book from an engineering standpoint that totally debunks the windpower lunacy. The headline I remember is you have to fill EVERY mile of coastal britain with wind power to match the peak demand -- and hoep the wind is blowing when it comes
 
DO see a future for the lake district, scotland and wales though and use the mountain areas for pumped storage hydro systems when the greenies realise that wind and sun aren\'t 24/7 !!

Absolutely, now THAT is a clever idea, storing electricity in the form of water as potential energy.

Incidentally, wherabouts \'nr Edinburgh\' are you? I\'m originally from Liberton and then Penicuik before I moved down here...

nuclear is the way forward!

Certainly in the short-to-medium term it is Jon, there\'s no other realistic source to feed our current demands if we get off fossils fuels.

So are we just ticking boxes when it comes to reusable energy?  Is it just something to keep the greens and show we are looking at other methods.  Similar to how Aston have had to build that silly car just to show they have green credentials!
 
I was always led to believe that it would take 10-20 years to start turning a profit on the wind generators, and solar was similar.
 
Water is certainly a way forward, tidal energy is huge isn\'t it? Ive not yet understood why the seven estuary unit was canned...it seemed to be a great source of free energy that is completely guaranteed!

This pretty much sums it up, any technical person with their head screwed on straight can see renewables (with the POSSIBLE exception of hydroelectric) it the waste of time and money that they are (most of the reasons I listed above can be applied to solar / PV, etc). however it is a kind of \'Emperors New Clothes\' scenarios in that no-one will tell it like it is for being seen as some sort of anti-planet Nazi or whatever the Daily Mail are currently calling them.

However, for stakeholder reasons (and by stakeholder I specifically mean public relations), all the big governments / companies have to be seen to be doing something to match the expectations of the public which has been (by and large) \'brainwashed\' by the half-arsed, factually incorrect arguments that have been perpetuated by Journalists, etc as mentioned by CPZ in post #11. Therefore, they are all taking baby-steps to be seen to be doing something, but if you scratch the surface, aren\'t really committed at all.

graeme

[Prof]

The main thin in "carbon emissions" that are glossed over by journo\'s who don\'t ever understand science is that we have been digging up carbon ( in oil/coal/gas/peat) locked in the earth and burning it thus creating an unnatural imbalance demonstrated by the increase in CO2.
NO time in the past has any activity introduced such a huge amount in such a short time -- all driven by "man".
 

In fact a Volcano can quite easily achieve this in a much shorter time that we can - one large volcano can put more CO2 in the atmosphere in a few days than we\'ve managed to do since the beginning of the industrial revolution...
 
Makes you think.
 
Another interesting point is that according to some research, the earth should be much hotter than it is based on the emissions we\'ve made, but mankind has somehow managed to save his own ar$e by emitting a large amount of particulate (coal burning, diesels and so forth) and this has caused \'global dimming\' - keeping the sunlight levels lower and helping balance out the CO2 increase.
 
Then there\'s the effectiveness of different greenhouse gases - water vapour is far worse than CO2 (like tens/hundreds of times worse), and so we move towards lower CO2 emissions by using less carbon rich fuels - like say Hydrogen - which burns in air to make - you guessed it - harmless old water (or is it )?
 
I think the computer models are flawed - they haven\'t spent long enough looking at the longer term natural trends to understand how we can impact on it, and I\'m fairly certain some variables are missing all together from their research.
 
All that being said - I am not against cleaning up our act, being responsible with fuel and energy usage, and designing in efficiency into new things we build.  That\'s just good husbandry and we should always stive towards this.

[Competition PZ]

Prof, I agree on Volcano, but we don\'t get those big ones any more and we dont control those and IF one were to happen it ADDS not replaces what we do
 
Liek they say cows burp more gases than cars by an order of magnitude, but we need to eat meat ( or do we ... a debate for another evening )
 
You are spot on on the models being flawed and why each "faction" in this debate can use a model built on different premises and samples and come up with the answer the politician/big-business wants
 
"Good husbandry" ... I like it, embodies the whole big picture without needing to get too anal about the reasoning.

[AtomicRex]

Heres another thought.
 
Are the greener issues pushed by car manufacturers?
We are persuaded to buy a new car, as it will be greener because it will be more fuel efficient.
 
However, these new cars cost in terms of Co2,
new plastics
new engines
transportation of the cars via see
batteries (they are a huge debate on their own!)
scrapping your existing car.
 
So we are doing the world a favour holding on to our ageing Rx7s despite the crap fuel consumption

[trotter]

In fact a Volcano can quite easily achieve this in a much shorter time that we can - one large volcano can put more CO2 in the atmosphere in a few days than we\'ve managed to do since the beginning of the industrial revolution...
 
Makes you think.
 
Another interesting point is that according to some research, the earth should be much hotter than it is based on the emissions we\'ve made, but mankind has somehow managed to save his own ar$e by emitting a large amount of particulate (coal burning, diesels and so forth) and this has caused \'global dimming\' - keeping the sunlight levels lower and helping balance out the CO2 increase.
 
Then there\'s the effectiveness of different greenhouse gases - water vapour is far worse than CO2 (like tens/hundreds of times worse), and so we move towards lower CO2 emissions by using less carbon rich fuels - like say Hydrogen - which burns in air to make - you guessed it - harmless old water (or is it )?
 
I think the computer models are flawed - they haven\'t spent long enough looking at the longer term natural trends to understand how we can impact on it, and I\'m fairly certain some variables are missing all together from their research.
 
All that being said - I am not against cleaning up our act, being responsible with fuel and energy usage, and designing in efficiency into new things we build.  That\'s just good husbandry and we should always stive towards this.

Spot on with the water comment Prof, however it is never taken into account on greenhouse gas lists for too reasons:

1) Because of the balance between evaporation from the land and precipitation as rain, snow etc depends on humidity (in turn, a function of temperature) you can never be sure as to how much water vapour is up there.

2) If you don\'t know (apologies if you do!!) the \'warming\' effect comes as a result of greenhouse gases absorbing infrared radiation that would have otherwise reflected back into space and re-directing it back down to earth. But because the absorption spectra of water closely overlaps several other GHGs, it\'s impossible to tell how much it actually contributes - it may be a lot, it may be negligible.

graeme