I'm not sure how anyone could have agreed or disagreed with me, as I gave no position, just a hypothetical.Zarathustra wrote: Hmm . . . you didn't seem to have a problem when Avatar quoted exactly the same portion, and then agreed.
Apparently, not edited enough....Kalkin wrote:I'm not sure how anyone could have agreed or disagreed with me, as I gave no position, just a hypothetical.Zarathustra wrote: Hmm . . . you didn't seem to have a problem when Avatar quoted exactly the same portion, and then agreed.
Let me clarify a bit, then. Suppose all of the carbon-trading and international bullcrap were off the table, would you agrre that limiting carbon-emmisions, researching alternate fuels, and in general being more "green" is a good thing?
*edited for spelling
Ah, you're right. How sloppy of me. I shouldn't have assumed that your question implied anything.Kalkin wrote: I'm not sure how anyone could have agreed or disagreed with me, as I gave no position, just a hypothetical.
No. I don't think there is any rational reason to limit carbon emissions. To do so would drive up energy costs, and add to the price of every commodity manufactured and transported. This would hurt our entire economy, and hurt poor people more than anyone else. It would be a massive regressive tax passed on to every consumer.Let me clarify a bit, then. Suppose all of the carbon-trading and international bullcrap were off the table, would you agrre that limiting carbon-emmisions, researching alternate fuels, and in general being more "green" is a good thing?
*edited for spelling
Cail, if AGW does not exist GW certainly does; what needs to be proved is that remedial action will alleviate the GW. We have discussed this before and you know, because I have directly responded to you, that I supported Kyoto for the fact that it is an International Forum and an International Forum is needed. Equally I do not support Emission Trading schemse per se, but do support the establishment of a system that will motivate and be the impetus to change our practices for the better: EMS is, if implemented properly, a means to that end as has been the case in Europe.Cail wrote:Finn, it's very simple. AGW does not exist. If it does, someone needs to prove it. There's a hypothesis out there, and the vast majority of the data supporting it is suspect whether you want to admit it or not.
That being the case, you (and not just you specifically) can work towards an actual solution (reducing pollution and increasing wealth), or you can continue to beat the AGW drum and obstruct every other move towards bettering air quality (which is exactly what the vast majority of the AGW crowd has done).
As such, I think this is grossly unfair, I have always advocated the need for pollution reduction and the development of new industry (with consequential wealth generation) to develop cleaner and greener tcehnologies. If I've shifted positions a bit it is as a result of having to refute some real nonsense and for the record (again) I have as little time for Gore as you do; he too is but a means to an end.Actually, that's what I've been suggesting for years, but Finn and others here have poo-pooed that idea. Finn, Al Gore is responsible for insisting the debate is over.
It is mutually exclusive with creating wealth as long as this "new industry" is subsidized with tax payer money, and the new industry isn't profitable. You can usually tell it's not profitable when the government must subsidize it with tax payer money. If there was a profit in it, you wouldn't need to force people to "invest" in it. They would do it on their own.finn wrote: I do not see that belief or otherwise in AGW is mutually exclusive from: reducing pollution and increasing wealth
I don't think that's necesarily true. If "Big Oil" is able to effectively stomp the competition of fledgling technologies, that's a pretty big barrier to private investment. Sure, private investors could technically invest in "green" technology...much like one could join a third party, but the results are the same: nothing comes of it, you might as well invest in something surer.Zarathustra wrote:Seven Words, nothing stops private investors from spending their money. There is no conspiracy from Big Oil to keep alternative energy sources from being developed. In fact, they are researching these alternative energies, too.
Nothing has hurt scientific research like the promise of profit. Everytime a gene is discovered, there's a rush to patent it, so any useful research that involves this gene runs into the issue of increased costs. This is because Congress had the bright idea to allow researchers at universities to profit from the results of their research. What happens? The scientific community no longer works in unison, progress is slowed.Part of the reason these technologies are still "fledgling" (despite all the decades we've wasted trying to develop them) is precisely because the government is footing the bill. When people work for grants, instead of profit, they have no incentive to produce decisive results. They can get by for years on mediocrity--or even abject failure--simply because there is political will for more spending. Political will is nothing like profit motive.
Now I think I understand why Pickens gave up on wind power: someone must have educated him on the economics of it...Zarathustra wrote:American Thinker had a good article today on why one "green" energy, wind power, makes no sense.
Particularly since a valid argument for national security interest can be made. I almost see it as a civil defense operation.Seven Words wrote: Can't agree with you completely about not using government subsidies...Any new technology that is attempting to break the paradigm which supports a large conglomeration of business interests will be opposed to the utmost to defend their profitability (and very existence, possibly). Governmental assistance to enable the fledgling technology to have a genuine chance to prove its worth can be necessary.
There is absolutely no security interest in getting off of oil. We export oil (to 70 countries--buy it from 90 countries). Sure, we import more than we export, but we're not even drilling for all the oil we have here. We could get off foreign oil if we wanted to. It just doesn't make economic sense to do so. Thus, we don't.ParanoiA wrote:Particularly since a valid argument for national security interest can be made. I almost see it as a civil defense operation.
Government money, as currently used, is the problem. Private funding to develop and test on small scale. Then, once they can prove the viability (in economic terms), government involvement. NOT handout. But low-interest loans. I do hope you aren't comparing me to Al Gore. The man's become an idiot. He's become a whacko tree-hugger. I doubt wind will ever be viable, personally.Zarathustra wrote:Seven Words, nothing stops private investors from spending their money. There is no conspiracy from Big Oil to keep alternative energy sources from being developed. In fact, they are researching these alternative energies, too.
Part of the reason these technologies are still "fledgling" (despite all the decades we've wasted trying to develop them) is precisely because the government is footing the bill. When people work for grants, instead of profit, they have no incentive to produce decisive results. They can get by for years on mediocrity--or even abject failure--simply because there is political will for more spending. Political will is nothing like profit motive. In the real world driven by profit motive, you must produce results. In the fantasy world of idealism and political wish-lists, all you need is passionate, ill-informed voters and Al Gores to manipulate them. Presto! Unending money supply going to a technology that can't work. Even if we made windmills 100% efficient, they can't work when the wind stops blowing. For this reason, the coal-fired powerplants which back them up must be kept running continuously, because they can't be started up at the drop of a hat, and we can't have blackout everytime the wind stops.
Government money is the problem.
So, doesn't seem to be a national security issue, altho we would care about ME if we care about price of oil.E. Contradicting a common assertion, the U.S. doesn’t import most of its oil from the Middle East.
1. In 2007 our top foreign suppliers were Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Angola. Only 15% of total consumption comes from Middle Eastern countries
2. However, because the oil market is a world market, events in an oil-producing country (such as Iran) with which we have no dealings whatsoever will influence the price of our oil.
linkA key component of the scientific argument for anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has been disproven. The results are hiding in plain sight in peer-reviewed journals.
[...]
Three peer-reviewed journal contain data contradicting the AGW hypothesis.
[...]
The science behind the AGW hypothesis is that increased amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere (that humans produce by burning fossil fuels) will block more outgoing long-wave IR radiation (OLR) from exiting the atmosphere and thereby warm the surface. It is well-known that IR radiation causes CO2 molecules to vibrate, but only at very specific wavelengths (wavelengths are the distances between peaks of each wave), and that wavelength is 15µm. (Fifteen µm means that each wavelength crests at a distance of 15 millionths of a meter.) As was discussed above, this vibration of the molecule causes it to heat and then radiate IR radiation back toward the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. If the solar activity is taken to remain constant, more CO2 in the atmosphere will trap more of the OLR, and thus cause a net heating of the planet.
So what type of experiment could be performed to test this AGW hypothesis? If there were satellites in orbit monitoring the emission of OLR over time at the same location, then OLR could be measured in a very controlled manner. If, over time, the emission of OLR in the wavelengths that CO2 absorbs decreases over time, then that would prove the AGW hypothesis (i.e., that OLR is being absorbed by CO2 and heating the planet instead of being emitted from the atmosphere). But what if, over time (say, over thirty years), the emissions of OLR wavelengths that CO2 absorb remained constant? That would disprove the hypothesis and put the AGW argument to bed.
As luck would have it, that experiment has actually been performed! Three journal papers report the data from three monitoring satellites that have measured the OLR of 1997 and 2006 and compared those measurements to 1970, and they are located here, here, and here.
There were three different experiments performed in space to measure OLR emissions. The Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer (IRIS) was performed in 1970, the Interferometer Monitor of Greenhouse Gases (IMG) was performed in 1997, and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) was performed in 2006. All of these experiments were performed over the Pacific Ocean and confined to the same three-month period (April through June), and the data were limited to cloudless days. The variable measured was brightness temperature, which is given in degrees Kelvin (K). Higher brightness temperatures correlate to higher emissions (meaning that more OLR is emitted to the atmosphere and less is absorbed by GHG).
[...]
The next figure (from the second link above) shows the actual measurements of OLR emission in 1997 vs. 1970. The dark line is the IMG data (from 1997), and the gray line is the IRIS line (from (1970). After analyzing this graph, the following conclusion can be drawn: The 1997 OLR associated with CO2 is identical to that in 1970.
[...]
So the results of three different peer-reviewed papers show that over a period of 36 years, there is no reduction of OLR emissions in wavelengths that CO2 absorb. Therefore, the AGW hypothesis is disproven.
It should be noted that another paper written by Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi (both work at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences -- Lindzen is a professor and Choi is a postdoctoral fellow) reveals the differences between the measured OLR and its impact on temperatures vs. climate models. In the paper, the data showed that OLR increased when sea surface temperatures increased, so this is in direct contradiction to the AGW hypothesis that less OLR should be emitted since more CO2 is absorbing it and warming the planet. Furthermore, in contradiction to the climate models, these results show that OLR is acting like a negative feedback (cooling the surface) instead of a positive feedback (radiative forcing). The Lindzen and Choi paper dealt in general with all OLR wavelengths and didn't show granularity with respect to specific wavelengths that were related to various GHG absorption, but the fact that the entire OLR emission spectrum didn't behave like the eleven climate models' predictions means that "the science isn't settled."
