"Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 3 42

[jmw]

At 273 posts I guess the time has come to request the old thread archived and continue in a new thread and it is in this thread that I think the latest news has its proper place.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?
Actually, perhaps we'd better not answer that because I suspect the answer is that in any profession there are complete f***-ups who will never be brought to book simply because the credibility of the people who have believed them for so long is also at risk and once one goes then the domino effect comes into being.

I guess that it is only when NASA closes that we will see and end to the career of this fine purveyor of temperature data but we can be sure he will turn up in some other role on the IPCC or as an acolyte of Nobel Laureate, Al Gore.

Success, it seems, depends not on getting it right but on notoriety and why else would so many deadly politicians earn so much on the speaking circuit once they have finally left office and while their dark deeds are still fresh in everyone's mind?


You know I can't help wondering, if it weren't for those "Chads" I wonder what sort of a condition the world would be in now? And, if we are in dire financial straits now, what kind of position would we otherwise be in?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[KENAT]

Well, the hours spent trying to estimate how much shipping material we used, even though an awfull lot of it got re-used or recycled could have been more usefully spent on other stuff, at least from a business point of view. This was because of some environmental rule or standard as I recall.

Then there was the fun of bringing the metal treatment plant up to the latest environmental standards, and the paint shop.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done or doesn't have benefits, but to claim as you do "Cleaning thing up a bit did not hurt." doesn't ring true to my ear.

I now remember why I quit reading these threads.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[jmw]

No you didn't, Kenat, you're still reading and replying!
You may be getting a little frustrated though as, I suspect, we all are.
It would be really nice to have some more science or some believable reproducible data untainted by dubious challenged manipulations.

It would be nice if someone could ask Michael Mann et al (and et Al Gore) what role they think the sun has in climate and what we are to do about water vapour.

It would be nice to think that Lysenkoism died out long ago.
It would be nice to think that the current cooling spell would reach some kind of magnitude and duration that it would be considered a natural part of the natural cycle and not an abnormality or not just something else caused by man (the effects of pollution also contribute to global chilling - chilling is the word to use in searches, not cooling - are said to "mask the effects of global warming when in fact it might possibly be more truthfully said that CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning are about balanced by the cooling effects of SOX emissions) which leaves us where?)

Of course, the AGW types will only acknowledge the cooling cycle as significant once we have spent untold trillions on eco-engineering, enough so they could claim that the all that investment in wind farms and whatever had shown some benefits.

Actually, that reminds me of a story:
A man who every day took his usual seat on the train from Basingstoke to London, each day watched with increasing curiosity, another regular passenger carefully tear up his Times Newspaper into tiny little bits and spread them all around his feet.
Finally curiosity got the better of manners and he asked the question:
"Pardon me, and I apologise for disturbing you, but why do you do that?"
The newspaper shredder looked up and replied "Oh, its to keep the elephants away."
"But there are no elephants!" exclaimed the other.
"I know," he replied, "effective, isn't it?"




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[csd72]

Kenat,

Even more imporant. The UK is polluted enough as it is.

By the way, the environmental thing has been going on for decades here from before climate change was a real issue.

This is for a very good reason as there is so little environment left over here and any pollution effects a lot of people due to the dense population.

 

[Unotec]

csd72,

I do not know where you live, but

This is for a very good reason as there is so little environment left over here and any pollution effects a lot of people due to the dense population.

as far as I can tell, humans ARE part of the environment. We tend to modify it a little more drastically than other species but, sorry, you and I belong to nature. (BTW, ask some farmers or lease road workers whether beavers affect their environment or not).

This is for a very good reason as there is so little environment left over here and any pollution effects a lot of people due to the dense population

well, gotta define environment first. Wild? maybe a little left, I'll agree, but we gotta live somewhere. If the human race was to spread thin just to avoid the urban destruction of the environment, just think of the millions of km2 of roads needed then, or power, or gas or....

And

By the way, the environmental thing has been going on for decades here from before climate change was a real issue

I have worked FOR the environment all my professional life and I am a tree hugger, just not a fanatic. If, and I say IF, we are effecting the GLOBAL Climate, I first need to see proof, sustainable, scientifically sound, before putting a smile in my face looking how my taxes drain my bank account and go into non sustainable processes that, in occasions, burns my food!

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[cranky108]

There was a news article about more of the antartic ice sheet breakingup. I got to thinking about another news story of several years ago, about the silting of streams.
So what if the silting of streams, caused by erosion, increased the salt level of oceans (not global warming).
How would this effect things?

Is it possible the effects, called global warming, are actually caused by a different polution than the one they are trying to regulate? And maybe the globe isen't really warming?

 

[btrueblood]

Interesting thought, cranky. Human beings use a lot of salt, not just in our food, but as the basis of a lot of manufacturing, maybe all of it involves salt at some point in the process, if we dig far enough.

I think we could start something with this, without even very much effort. Chart salt mining, annual salt production, etc. vs. apparent ice cap thickness or acreage or volume over time (clearly there is a correlation, salt production today is the highest it's ever been, and ice caps are the thinnest)*. We all know that correlation == causation, so don't bother to expend a lot of effort to justify that chart. Try and find historical records of ocean salinity over time (some ancient Peruvian monastery probably measured salinity for the past 500 years). Find archeological records that you can circumstantially link to salinity levels (some kind of crustacean shell density perhaps, or the number of dendrites in fossil seaweed leaves, or...?). Then go stand before Congress and testify that we need to cap global salt production. Discuss fossil salt vs. sea salt production, claim that sea salt is a "renewable" or green technology, vs. fossil salt production. Propose legislation that lets industries trade their salt discharge or lack of same to salt miners.

Let me know when you are ready to "go public" with this, I want to short sell my salt mine stocks, and buy shares of sand companies, tire chain and snow tire producers, and auto repair companies. Oh, and stock up on beef jerky.

---------
* - just like there is a correlation (although an inverse one) between pirates and global temperatures. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FSM_Pirates.png

Oh, and in case anybody was wondering, I am being totally serious here, no sarcasm has ever passed this keyboard (I use antiferrous software to prevent unwanted bouts of irony).

 

[Unotec]

btrueblood.... *&^*^%... don't start it! I enjoy my salt in my food too much!
But cranky's gotta point!! Salt, deforestation, etc... might actually be more of a problem, globally, than emissions.
There, some scientist can pick up this and get a grant for research!

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[KENAT]

The acid levels of the sea are apparantly a concern.

I vote we dump a bunch of tums in, let's see their stock rise.

Oops, I wasn't going to read this thread again, darn it.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[cranky108]

We could also tie the salt thing to obesity, and make it twice as big as the current climate change thing. And double the proposed tax increases.

I actually don't hate all salts, only MgCl.

 

[jmw]

OK, so the age of the oceans/earth is a function of the salinity from just that mechanism...

http://unmaskingevolution.com/27-oceanage.htm

But there is a hell of a lot of salt already in there.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

Download this book free of charge from

http://www.withouthotair.com/

"Sustainable Energy — without the hot air"
It is by a physicist and quantifies some of our energy options. He summarizes global warming but treats it as a fait accompli. I would have preferred some pros and cons since I am not yet convinced.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[hokie66]

Just an Australian columnist's view, but he is one who does his homework.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25402980-5007146,00.html

 

[btrueblood]

"We could also tie the salt thing to obesity"

Wait, would obesity not drive global cooling? I'm imagining acres of untanned white flesh reflecting the sun's rays...and now I'm trying not to imagine it...darn.

 

[cranky108]

If you want to see the obesity thing in action, just go to the beach.
This is also the reverse of erosion, or the transportation of sand from the ocean to some place inland.

 

[btrueblood]

e

http://www....

 

[cranky108]

imagine snow caped mountans, as the earth slowly gets colder from the lack of sun spot activity.

We can fix that, just add CO2.

 

[LCruiser]

cranky108 (Electrical) 5 May 09 23:00:
"imagine snow caped mountans, as the earth slowly gets colder from the lack of sun spot activity.

We can fix that, just add CO2."

Maybe - then again, increasing CO2 has never warmed Earth before...

 

[cranky108]

Agree that increasing CO2 may have never warmed the Earth before.
However I am seeing more in print that the Earth is cooling, and we still have congress wanting to regulate CO2.
It appears more and more about regulation then CO2.

So I'm thinking the CO2 issue is a side bar to the desire to regulate a moot point.
Or as a congressmen once said "There's to much consuming going on out there".

 

[LCruiser]

"Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life."

Richard Lindzen

 

[csd72]

anyone who questions mans ability to affect the environment should check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch