DaveG55

The last post was locked for becoming political so, if the mods will allow this, lets try to keep politics out of the conversation please.
Here is an article from the Telegraph in England that I found very ineresting. It's a copy and paste but I'll include the link at the end also.

Global warming: Reasons why it might not actually exist
2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved, according to the Telegraph's Christopher Booker. Sceptics have long argued that there are other explanations for climate change other than man-made CO2 and here we look at some of the arguments put forward by those who believe that global warming is all a hoax.

Last Updated: 1:51PM GMT 30 Dec 2008

Some icebergs are melting -but not necessarily because of mankind's actions Photo: REUTERS
Temperatures are falling, not rising

As Christopher Booker says in his review of 2008, temperatures have been dropping in a wholly unpredicted way over the past year. Last winter, the northern hemisphere saw its greatest snow cover since 1966, which in the northern US states and Canada was dubbed the "winter from hell". This winter looks set to be even worse.

The earth was hotter 1,000 years ago

Evidence from all over the world indicates that the earth was hotter 1,000 years ago than it is today. Research shows that temperatures were higher in what is known as the Mediaeval Warming period than they were in the 1990s.

The earth's surface temperature is not at record levels

According to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies analysis of surface air temperature measurements, the meteorological December 2007 to November 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. Their data has also shown that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

Ice is not disappearing

Arctic website Crysophere Today reported that Arctic ice volume was 500,000 sq km greater than this time last year. Additionally, Antarctic sea-ice this year reached its highest level since satellite records began in 1979. Polar bear numbers are also at record levels.

Himalayan glaciers

A report by the UN Environment Program this year claimed that the cause of melting glaciers in the Himalayas was not global warming but the local warming effect of a vast "atmospheric brown cloud" over that region, made up of soot particles from Asia's dramatically increased burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Temperatures are still dropping

Nasa satellite readings on global temperatures from the University of Alabama show that August was the fourth month this year when temperatures fell below their 30-year average, ie since satellite records began. November 2008 in the USA was only the 39th warmest since records began 113 years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/env...lly-exist.html

Also, ther were a couple of comments in the last thread that said that "most" or "all" climate scientists agree that there is global warming and I'd like to point out that this is simply untrue. There are many, many scientists that do not agree. All it takes is a Google search and you hundreds of scientists who disagree.

A report from the American Policy Center of the UN
http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/thereisnoglobal.htm

From The National Center For Public Policy Research - complete with a list of sources
http://www.nationalcenter.org/TSR032204.html

From PrisonPlanet.com
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles..._cools_off.htm

From SpaceScience.com
http://spacescience.spaceref.com/new...d14jul97_1.htm

From NationalPublic Radio (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1893089

Those are just a few of the thousands of hits I got and I found a lot of very interesting reading

Mods, If you feel this may go political please just lock the thread rather than delete it. There is a lot of good, nonpolitical info in those links.

Thanks
Dave

SAVAGEJIM

These are very good links with great info.

I also noticed there is this huge fixation with carbon emissions. And everyone saying alternatives fuels like corn ethanol and hydorgen fuel cells.

I personally see a fallacy with corn ethanol, a crop that everyone says is carbon neutral. To grow corn to significantly displace fossil fuel as a fuel source, corn requires lots of land space to grow. What will happen is anyone who can grow corn will sacrifice existing trees and plant life to grow this newly high demand commodity. So, you will see lots of South Americans setting the tropical forests on fire, destroying massive amounts of vegetation that was already doing more to synthesize CO2 into O2. And teh corn crop that now is growing on the destroyed tropical forest will not process near as much CO2 as teh forest once did. Additionally, growing corn requires huge amounts of energy: bringing in fertilizers to replenish the ground neutrients, the amount of fuel to run harvestors, and teh trucks to transport the corn, and bring in the fertilizers. Sure, these trucks, and farm machinery will probably be run on teh fuels created by the corn, but they still will not make up for teh lost CO2 processing the destroyed forests once did.

Furthermore, Alcohol fuels (ethanol and methanol) have a significantly lower BTU count per unit mass than fossil fuels. This means you will need to burn significantly more corn fuel to make do the same amount of work that fossil fuels would do.
Additionally, corn being processed for fuel will displace other crops for human consumption. The risk of not enough food crops being grown will become an actual problem.

RCtruckRacer

No problems so far! lol

Personally, I have no stance on this subject. Mankind has not been keeping weather records for very long so it seems a bit much to say one way or the other.


One thing I know we can all agree on is that deforestation and pollution should be kept to the minimum possible levels. That just makes sense. To me anyway.

HJJFFFAA

Somewhat off-topic, if we are so worried about running out of fuel why not simply make it? We have all the elements that make up the fuels we use so why not just shove the elements together (metaphorically of course) and ,BOOM, instant gasoline?

On topic. How is ethanol carbon neutral? Anything that burns releases some amount of carbon due to that fact that in every one of our usual fuels contains hydrocarbons. The hydrogen gets burned away and what we are left with is carbon and other chemical by-products. To say any fuel that works by burning is carbon nuetral is completely ludicrous.

SAVAGEJIM

The concept of corn being carbon neutral is when it is growing, it takes CO2 out of the air. then, when it is burned as a fuel, it releases the very same amount of carbon back into the air. Then, when corn is growing again, it is sucking CO2 out of teh air again.

This of course assumes that no other outside energies must be expended to facilitate this process. It also assumes that no existing plant life is sacrificed for their land to grow corn (plant life that is especially more effective at scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere to make O2).

hands without shadows

It would take energy to "shove the elements together" to make gasoline. More energy than the gasoline will have.

HJJFFFAA

Ooooh. Perhaps I should've looked up carbon neutrality first.

SAVAGEJIM

I dont know if that info is on the net, I leaned that from a chem engineer who was helping his professor research professor research the viability of alternative fuels. Hydrogen fuels also was mentioned, and he said that hydrogen fuel cells also have their caveats.

HJJFFFAA

Yes but hydrogen fuel cells don't work by burning. they combine oxygen and hydrogen together which produces an electrical charge which powers an electric motor. The main problem is the fuel cell. The hydrgen has to be stored at such high pressures that in an accident the tank could be punctured and fail and that can lead to an explosion.

SAVAGEJIM

That is true. Aside form the logistics of creating a safe, reliable and massivily available infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cells, the current most difficult problem is making the hydrogen gas.

Even though hydrogen is everywhere (water, hydrocarbon molecules, sodium hydroxide, etc,) it takes tremendous amounts of energy to separate hydrogen from the other atoms of a molecule. Of course, when hydrogen recombines with other atoms again, a high amount of energy is given off. Unfortunately, the energy given off is significantly less than teh energy required to remove hydrogen atoms from other atoms in a molecule.

HJJFFFAA

Another major pitfall!!! I just hope the next energy source is as convienient as gasoline. I have come to terms with my fear that automobiles of the future will not emit that primordial growl or roar like they do today.

FloridaDude

Personaly I thnk global warming is a load of . I live in Maine and it was 0* last week and is 14* right now. And being a mechanic the stuff that HJJJFFAA is absolutly correct. Theres just something about have a tank with 5000psi under my ass. What I dont get is why no one has created a Natural gas(Honda FCX)/Electric car(Smart Car). I have already started designing one but its not like i have $200,000 to prototype the engine.

SAVAGEJIM

Well, until we can develop reliable and feasible alternative sources, fossil fuels must bring us there.

Some things we can do is make more an more fuel efficient vehicles. Hybrids are a good step, but why do we stop at 50MPG? Gasoline hybrid is teh absolute no-no in this effort. What we must do with hybrids is go diesel hybrid, those are guaranteed to get 100MPG, and that is not an exageration.

There was a time when diesels were touted as dirty, but with diesels being refined further and strained of sulfur, they are cleaner. Additionaly, US EPA standards require 15PPM sulfur from diesel engines made today. Diesel engines make alot mroe torque than gas engines, so, a very small diesel engine, a 2cylinder of half the displacement of a rPius' 4cylinder, can make similar or the same amount of torque of the larger dis[placement gas engine. Additionally, diesel engines last hundreds of thousands of mils more than gas engines, so reliability is not as bad an issue as one might think. So, diesel-hybrids should be the next hybrid step in reducing fossil fuel consumption and thus pollution from vehicles.

Additionally, why are the hybrid electric drive components DC electric? Virtually every single train locomotive on the tracks today are AC. And AC locomotives have proven time and again that AC traction motors simply give better fuel efficiency than DC traction motors.

Ironically, the largest locomotive manufacture in the US is EMD, which is a sub-company of General Motors (just like how Pontiac, Chevrolet, Cadillac are sub companies of GM). And anyone who knows anything about locomotives knows these are the very first mass produced hybrid vehicles. They are all diesel electric vehicles (minus the batteries of course, but batteries are not hard to integrate. As a matter of fact, General Electric is now developing a locomotive that includes batteries).

Why has not GM hit the freight truck scene with diesel-AC electric big truck to compete against Freightliner, International, Mack, & Peterbilt? Many truck drivers were hit very hard by the fuel hikes this past summer, and diesel-AC hybrid freight trucks would be an excellent solution in reducing freight diesel demand. Yes, such Diesel-AC hybrid trucks would be mega expensive, 2-3 times more than a full diesel truck today, but as more and more truckers buy them, the prices will come down as the truck makers finally pay off teh retooling and R&D costs.

There is so much we can do now to slowly ween ourselves off of fossil fuels, we should take those steps.

Mr. Mugen

Ok...pm me your engine design and I willl try to build it for you....hehe.

SAVAGEJIM

I guess just design it as any other engine, just subtract a few cylinders, and redo the crank angles to each other to balance teh engine.

Small diesel engines are not really than new, Volvo, VW, and others have made small diesel engines.

DaveG55

But diesel or natural gas don't really get us away from fossil fuels. I honestly don't believe that any alternative energy source will be successfully intergrated into society until the infrastructure is inplace to make it convienant to use.

So many of the things we use daily have come from science fiction maybe the thing that will finally break the strangle hold of oil is a nuclear reactor like in "Back To The Future"??????????

Cold fusion is just fairy tail stuff right now but in 50 years, who knows?????

FloridaDude

i wish someone would build it because if they do it would get by my calculations about 90-110mpg

Longhair

Wasn't global warming discovered by a non-scientist who invented the internet?

HJJFFFAA

The internet wasn't created by just one person.

Eman77

I agree with that. Whether or not you believe in global warming, it just makes sense to keep pollutants as low as possible, reduce dependency on foreign oil, stuff like that.

I like the links that the first poster linked to, but be careful on checking the dates of those. For example, the NPR article was dated 2004 - things have changed (in terms of what I've heard the scientific community globally) believes since then. The overarching point is, sure, google can yield all kinds of hits, but you have to be careful with any random topic you read on the internet - check dates, sources, etc. I don't believe that our topic starter is linking to bad articles....but that 2004 date from NPR threw me for a loop. (Especially since everything I've heard from NPR in the past 2 years is more and more interviews w/scientists who really believe in global warming).

I'm the one who said that scientists agree it exists - I know not everyone in the world does, but from what I've read, more and more scientists globally are believing it - and it seems the US is traditionally slower to adopt that stance. Interestingly, the US is the only developed country NOT to sign the Kyoto Treaty - another poster in the last thread claimed that the US is doing its part, and other countries are not. The Kyoto Treaty seems to indicate otherwise.

But anyway....like I said...believe it or not, it's up to you. But I think we can all agree that reducing our pollutants, and finding alternate sources of energy is just a good thing in the long run, right?

Eman77

Mods, please feel free to modify my post if parts are "too political" to keep this topic open. I don't want to be the cause of closing a good discussion. The problem is, it's hard to avoid "political" on a topic like this. It is best to avoid flaming, of course!

RCKen

My Feedback: (9)

If politics cannot be avoided then this topic will be shut down again. Politics is one of the "verboten" subjects here on RCU, and if a subject cannot be discussed without bringing politics into the discussion then that subject is not going to be discussed here on RCU.

Ken

Anomie

Thanks for the permission to edit [&:]

It is the responsibility of each member to remain within the guidelines.

slayerphonics

Its a theory but the worlds treats it as if its a fact,

Get this,

A couple of states are going to start charging a tax based on how many miles you drive because they are not making as much money on the fuel tax because people are driving more fuel efficient cars and not driving as much.

Global warming is a theory and marketed to make money,

The driving force to our weather is the sun,

I'm sure the global warming activist will say we are polluting the sun soon.

DaveG55

I know that some of the links were 4 years old - oh so ancient but that does not mitigate the 2008 NASA data that says global temps are actually falling or that the ice caps are really increasing or that the earths temp is actually colder than it was 1000 years ago. Those are facts that are often ignored or flat out lied about by the "warmers". I read an article a couple of months ago that proved that the one of the global warming sponsered agencies that is susposed to track global mean temps was using old and false data in order to make it apear that the earth is warming. To me, ignoring data and falisifying data makes it hard to lend credence to any claims that are made.

Has anyone read Michael Chrichton's "State of Fear"? I know that it's fiction but it's uncanny how much of what's in the book mirrors todays media reporting. It really made me stop and look around and start trying to verify and crosscheck facts that are presented and to come to my own conclusions.