We're melting, we're meltingFollow

What? What? I have 100 threads per page, this thread was on my front page. Sorry if it's been hanging around your forum for a year, and it makes you all sick, it's the first time I've seen it and I got all excited.

My understanding is that water based plants (largely, the oceans) are a vastly larger sink of CO2 then land based plants. I haven't looked recently but I have heard things like seeding the oceans with some kind of mineral (to stimulate plankton growth) may be the way to go.

At some point, it may just become an economic question. Added to the cost of generating the electricity (or driving the car) is the cost to remove that CO2 back by the most efficient means available (or cooling the planet - giant sunshade at the L1 point or in low earth orbit may sound like sci fi but if this ends up being on the extreme end of the spectrum, maybe these will be the cheapest options.

Or it could be this generation's Hubbakkuk.

I believe the "ocean seeding" concept is done via iron fertilization although I admit I don't know much about it.

Yes, you have! Come one man, we had a whole debate about the fact that man-made global warming was a conspiracy from European Socialist governments. I can go and quote you, if you really want, but you know as well as I do thats what you argued.



If it wasn't for the fact that the US is the country that emits the most CO2 in the world, then I would agree with you.



And all of that has been done by the most prominent scientists in the field. But, I'm sure you think you now better.





I see. So doing a carbon emission trading scheme amongst European companies "benefits the government" without thenm explaining how it fixes teh problem".

So, you're either too stupid to realise how a carbon trading scheme can reduce the amount of emission, or it's bad-faith.

You tell me.



You just think Wal-Mart or Enron will take care of it. I see. Good luck with that.



*All* your freedoms? Excuse-me?! Please tell me what freedoms you have that I don't. Please tell me what freedom I gave away so that the poorest people are provided with council flats and uneployment benefits.



Please go to Europe, you ******* This is not the CCCP, nor Mao China.

You can be such a clueless dumbass sometimes, it's almost as though I'm talking to Varrus.




Yes, you have. You said scientists that argued global warming was man-made were in the pockets of European Socialist States taht wanted to control to world industries. Want me to fish out the quotes?



No, I assume you oppose global-warming because your President told you to, and because issues like the environment are "liberal" issues, and because youa re brain-washed to the point of not being able to make a rational decision on your own, relying instead on crackpot conspiracy theories involving socialist governemnts in Europe.



Not "the world", just you. Maybe if you were less one-dimensional in your arguments, and if you admitted, sometimes, to being wrong about some things, my view would change. But bad-faith and denial are all I see when your argumentation fails.



I agree. It's dead obvious.

However, a bit of honesty in the debate would help towards this, instead of pretending you didn't say things.

Also, go to Europe. Seriously, you sound like a Vietnam Veteran that sees Communist everywhere.

Yes. A person alone on a desert island no one visits is as about as close to maximum total freedom as a human being can get.

As soon as you get two human beings in the same place, you have to start trading off human freedoms. The funny thing? You can get MORE freedom, in other areas, if you trade in one freedom in one area.

Let's take the obvious one. We have all given up the freedom to kill other people. (In the U.S. you have reserved that right to the government in some circumstances). That's a massive freedom right there, suddenly taken away from us. But look what we get out of that.

Most people in Australia don't go in fear for their lives. They don't think twice about going to the shops or taking public transport. They don't spend massive amounts of money on weapons and time on training, and they don't build fortresses for their homes. By not being allowed to kill someone who pisses you off or insults your honour, you are suddenly liberated to get on with your own life.

Take road rules. You are in this big metal box that goes really fast. You could go all over the road, all over the parks, and people's gardens. It would be so much fun to charge over the feilds and the countryside. Why do you stay so meekly between some painted lines that do NOTHING to physically restrain you?

Could it be that by giving up so much freedom in driving over any surface that you wanted to, you are suddenly making the road system a workable proposition? And with a working road system, you can actually travel anywhere you want to go, that has connecting roads? You can take a job that is more than a walk away from your home. You can go on holiday to anywhere you have the petrol money to reach.

And lets not forget that the government took some of your property to pay for the roads. Not any of your real estate, and not any of your posessions. They didnt' take any of your time, except for the time it took to earn the money that they took in taxes. But you got to choose which job you were working in. And look what you got in return.

Back in the good old days, when nobody paid income tax, most people never ever travelled more than ten miles from thier home in their entire lives. They didn't pay income tax, so they had the freedom to get work in the next village over and never see their family again, except for being called for when someone was dying, because no car was getting through in the mud, and it was too far to walk.

Back in the good old days, when there was no income tax, you had the freedom when bad luck happened and you lost you income and your savings and no one wanted you for another job, or you were too sick to work, to throw yourself on the mercy of your family. You had the freedom when you had no family to starve to death, or turn to crime, begging, or prostitution. We won't mention Parish Workhouses, since today their conditions are reguarded as being no better than slavery.

Strangely enough I prefer a judicious trade-off of freedom between myself, my government, and other people. That's not to say I shouldn't keep a close eye on my government. But strangely enough I feel liberated by two decades of state-paid education. I feel liberated by federal paid medical care to get on with my life, and get back to work. I feel liberated by unemplyment benefits that give me some time to find a new job before I lose my home and starve to death.

I fell liberated by a state-paid police force and a justice system that does it's best to apply the law equally to all people. If makes me feel safer, and the freedom from fear that that safety brings liberates me to do all sorts of things i couldn't otherwise do.

Do you know how many centuries people argued against haveing police at all, because police were an infringement on personal liberty? Those were the centuries that no woman went outside her house alone. Where every man carried a weapon. Where people who could afford it always had retainers or servants with them. In one culture the solution to an unsafe world was for women to cover themselves entirely.

So here we have a global problem, that scientists think will affect most people adversly, and you are suspicious when governments try and come up with a global solution.

Every country gets a quota of CO2 that they are welcome to freely emit into the common atmosphere. Every country is welcome to divvy up those emission rights any way they like. Why are you freking out that American industry is going to be harmed by this? You've already said that American industry puts out very little emissions. So it's not going to be smart for Americal to try and cut it's emissions in it's industrial sector is it?

Exactly. America could meet it's quota easily if everyone replaced every incandescant light-bulb with a compact flurescent one, put insulation into their roof and bought energy efficient household appliances.

Alternatively America could meet it's quota by switching all it's power plants over to wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, tidal and geothermal. What would be easier would be a half and half mix of the two.

What about the coal and gas power plants? That's not fair that all those people are going to lose their jobs! Well, I hate to point out that when electricity was introduced, millions of steam-power stokers, and lamp-lighters lost their jobs. Not to mention message boys and a whole heap of suddenly surplus factory workers. They had to find jobs elsewhere, and steam plant and engine businesses had to switch to electrical production, or go out of of business.

Isn't it a good thing when governments provide education and living expense money to tide people over between jobs?

Or do you think the world would have been a better place, and those people's lives would have been better overall, if electricity had never taken over?

Now it's not a killer application that is taking over. It's a practical problem, like water rationing in a drought, that's forcing people to change their habits or reap a world of trouble.

You've asked where Al Gore's solutions are and I'm saying if you havent' heard his solutions, your news has been overy edited, or you haven't paid attention to the whole of his film, or you haven't seen a full interview with him

His film featured two graphs, that if you took everything else away, remain like a burning brand in your mind. The first graph was results from Antarctic ice cores, going back millions of years. They tracked the concentration of CO2 in the air, and the global average temperatures each year over the same time. Every time the Co2 concentration went up, the global temperature went up, and every time they went down, the tempretures went down. At the end of the modern period, the CO2 went up to double the concentration in the air that it's ever been at in all those millions of years.

The global tempreture hasn't had time yet to respond to this latest, and largest, spike.

The second graph was several variations on the last part of the last graph. It showed how much carbon dioxide would be in the air if a majority of people (not industries, but individuals) did certain things. It showed where CO2 would be at if everyone switched to compact lighting and energy efficient appliances. It showed where Co2 would be at if everyone got to work in a different way than driving a petrol car. Or where it would be at if everyone switched to a power company that didn't use coal.

The graph showed that if every person, did everything possible to not burn coal or petrol, Co2 levels would be way below an easy amount for the Earth to absorb. So it's not necessary to do everything possible. Doing half our available options is quite enough to fix the problem.

Al Gore's solutions were all the things I listed in a previous post above. None of was about ANYTHING to do with getting modern, efficient industry to emit less Co2 in it's actual production processes. Where industry could help is by having an elctrical source that isn't coal powered, or by installing insulation and energy efficient lighting into buildings.

The whole Kyoto idea of emission quota trading was to allow already efficient low polluters in industry and government to get a bonus for their effiency, and to allow high polluting third-world industries and power plants to buy rights to continue doing what they are already doing. Obviously the money spent to buy the rights to what they are already doing is supposed to be an incentive to change plants to lower emmitters of CO2. And it's a harsh measure They don't do anything differently and suddenly they have a new cost.

But if a government gets organised enough educate and motivate it's own people to cut their energy use themselves, or pays for non-coal powered power plants, or subsidises energy efficient equipment for industires and individuals, there's no need for industry to have any quotas imposed on them at all. The government has taken the burden of the quota entirely on itself, and dealt with the matter.

Again, the Kyoto emissions trading scheme is not concered that any one business or industrial source has a quota, or reduces CO2. Its concerned with One entire country staying within it's quota, or buying extra quota from elsewhere. (because the other nation had a surplus of CO2 savings)

The Kyoto emissions trading fully integrates the planting of trees or any other proven use of a carbon sink. A nation can show it's CO2 output, and then demonstrate it's use of new carbon sinks, like so many forests planted, and set aside in national parks, and the estimate of the total tonnage of carbon bound up in wood, given the year's growth of the trees in the forests.

The Kyoto protocol is set up to create a parallel world currency, that would work quite similarly to existing money, for most business and government. The extra effort would be for those people employed in measuring, monitoring and statistically reporting on CO2 emmissions and sinks.

Governments can choose whether to take on the responsibility of the quotas wholey themselves, or whether to involve private business. In a nation like America, when the statsticians figure out who is emitting what Co2, it's coal-fired electrical plants and petrol driven cars that are putting out the most. Every other industry just isn't going to notice a thing when the electricity is switched over. Guess what? When alternative power sources are scaled up to the same size as modern coal powered plants, their costs drop to the same sort of price per unit.

Modern cars can run just fine on ethanol instead of gas (petrol), and ethanol is carbon-neutral... the carbon is bound into plants, the carbon is released. The carbon is bound into plants, the carbon is released.

BP has seen the writing on the wall, and it's quietly putting more and more of it's company into alternatives to coal and petroleum. If only more companies were that smart.

/bow



I'm sorry I'm inflicting so much verbiage on you all. I just can't seem to find a full stop o.o;

Nah, it's a huge page of political opinion.


However, since my grandparent's home is less then a foot above sea-level, I have run out and planted two trees, and kissed my inheritance goodbye.

Edited, Feb 19th 2007 2:17am by Aripyanfar

Is gbaji?

I believe a double-blind study of 10,000 randomly selected people in North America, and Europe, followed over ten years, showed that 75% of adults are lactose intolerant to some degree and suffer a multitude of chronic illnesses entirely due to consuming dairy products.

This is not surprising, given that after the age of about 4, most people stop producing the enzymes that allow you to digest milk.

Any health benefits from drinking milk are heavily outwayed by the negatives, despite what the dairy companies would like you to believe.

Unlike Iron, Calcium is easily absorbed in large quantities from green leafy vegetables, as well as being found in abundance in other foods, other than milk.

In order to lay down new bone, the body requires the hormone progesterone, and 18 vitamins and minerals other than calcium in order to catalyze the reaction.

If you are eating a lot of fish, meat, nuts, legumes, fruit and vegetables, (especially "organically" grown ones) you will be getting all the nutrition you need. Problems with osteoporosis, that are not down to poor nutrition, are usually to do with a lack of the body-identical hormone progesterone. (synthetic variations called progestogens won't cut it).

This some sort of retarded OOT shit?

You read other forums besides here? I'm heartbroken.

I hope you're not paying them premium fees!

Same with my cousin but I don't stick it in her pooper.

You need to Lurk Moar Jophiel...


Did I just say that?