Global Warming good for the earth?Follow

Kinley Ardel,

Most people and a disgraceful amount of journalists persistently confuse WEATHER, with CLIMATE.

The Earth's long term climate does indeed depend on massive numbers of intricate interlocking Feedback Loops which can be described as "elegant and self-regulatory".

The Earths "climate system IS dominated by stabilizing processes, rather than destabilizing processes -- that is, negative feedback rather than positive feedback."

The problem is that humans and their cities and other activities have grown to such a size that we're starting to break the system. We're interfering in too many loops, and possibly more importantly we're interfering in some of the loops in such an outrageously strong way that the other dampening, stabilizing processes cannot compensate and drag the Earth back to it's usual overall long-term Median temperature.

Some oceanographers are now pretty sure that one of the Feedback Loops is going to cool the Earth overall for the next 10 to 30 years. They're pretty peeved about it, because they think there's a high chance that laypeople will take 10 or 30 years of stable weather and say "See! Climate Change was all a crock!". When in fact this Feedback Loop is just going to be masking a process of change to the long term Median that will still be continuing underneath.

If that's the case, I should be eligible for a bailout soon.

Any and all evidence for global warming is instantly hallowed. Anything said contrary is instantly big oil at work.

I don't say derision as a threat, or expect it to hold any weight. It is simply that you guys are so amusing to me and I just can't HELP myself but post.

"Eagle stop posting on Zam, nobody there makes sense anyhow."

"I KNOW! That's what makes it so damn fun."

EDIT: I feel I should clarify here. Gbaji tries to actually talk with you people. I think trying to reason with sycophantic halfwits suckling on the teat of leftwing fantasy-land is an exercise in futility from the get-go, and entertain no fantasies of anyone understanding the reality of what goes on around them. No one has a higher claim on shrill outrage and infantile temper tantrums than the American left - it is at once frustrating and hilarious to watch and read.



Edited, Apr 16th 2009 2:57pm by KinleyArdal

It's a conspiracy. No, really.

Or maybe it's not.

The truth is out there.

I want to believe.

Edited, Apr 16th 2009 2:59pm by KinleyArdal

I see you missed out on the wailing and screaming following the Dept. Homeland Security assessment from a couple days ago "Eagle"?

Edited, Apr 16th 2009 2:10pm by Jophiel

The naysayers are people who wish to deny the realities of global warming all because they don't want to admit that they care more about money than about attempting to save us all from environmental catastrophe.

Maverick and Iceman were taken.

Short answer: Yes we have more energy, but that won't help.

Ah the second law of thermodynamics. Okay here's the deal:

Heat spontaneously travels from high temperature places to low temperature places. It's like water sliding downhill. In the process, we can persuade some of it to do work for us. Imagine the water turning a giant waterwheel.

The efficiency of the process is defined to be the amount of useful work done (the waterwheel turning) divided by the heat energy from the hot place required to do so. (The rest of the energy which does not go into useful work goes directly, as heat, into the cold place. Of course the work will eventually turn into heat as well, and most of this will go into the cold place).

The maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat engine is given by the Carnot cycle. No real engines undergo the Carnot cycle. However, the efficiencies parallel the Carnot efficiency, and the equation for Carnot efficiency is simple. It is: one minus the quantity: (the temperature of the cold place divided by the temperature of the hot place) e = 1 - (T_c/T_h). (all temperatures in Kelvin).

The *cold* place where our engines put the heat is the atmosphere. Making that hotter decreases efficiency (although not by much).

Geothermal energy takes heat from the (hotter) deep places in the Earth and puts it into the (relatively colder) atmosphere. Again, making the atmosphere hotter makes this process less efficient (although, again not by so much - although this is much more effected then car engines).

Noodles: if you would care to post details I can look into whatever you are thinking about in further detail. As it stands now, I simply cannot imagine any way global warming would help.

Side note: Although there are places which will cool under global climate models, such changes are on large length scales and any kind of heat engine works quite locally: both to the end user of the useful work and the hot/cold places.

Hey, you know what else would let the earth soak up more energy?

Destroying the Magnetosphere.



Plants?

Regardless of if global warming is a conspiracy or not, it's a fact that we need to find better alternatives to many of the things we do now and to put them into action. It may cost more per year, but it's better to think ahead rather then pretend what happens to the earth only matters as long as your still alive. Plus, if polar bears go extinct we won't have coca-cola anymore.

Sure. But we need to also keep our heads about us as we go about it. The problem with a "cause" is that they tend to lead from emotion and not rational thought. We end up supporting political solutions which in many cases not only don't address or help the issue at hand at all, but may even make things worse.

Like spending 2+ Billion dollars on research for carbon sequestration technology. Something that isn't going to cost just a bit more per year, but will make coal energy so ridiculously expensive that no one can afford the technology, even if anyone would ever be allowed to build them in the first place. It's pretty clearly just designed to play on fears of global warming to pad the pockets of friends and supporters of various politicians.


Or supporting the Kyoto Accords (or something similar), which sound great in principle, but in reality would simply result in the polluting industries moving from the large industrial nations which already have significant pollution controls to small developing nations with virtually none and which are not restricted by the Accords themselves. The likely net effect for the US involving itself in such a scheme could be as much as a 7% increase in global production of the targeted pollutants, not a decrease.


Same deal with cap and trade systems. They look good on paper, but ultimately just become a tax on the industries (or push them to other shores). At the end of the day, there is X demand for products produced globally. That demand will be filled one way or another. Shifting the cost or location around doesn't address the problem, but often can be presented in a way that appears to. And that's why such causes are so politically viable.


I'm all for being as environmentally friendly and clean as possible. I just think that most of the political solutions that are being pushed on us have far less to do with actually protecting the environment and a whole lot more to do with the politics of appealing to those who want us to protect the environment.

Now you know how you'll make your first billion dollars. Get on it.

Use a mixture of water and Diethyl ether. Yes it's based on a temperature differential, much like that between day and night in a desert environment.

And it's explosive, so that's always fun.