What happened to Global Warming?
When I put my first above ground pool in around the late 90's we were able to open it in April and start swimming in May.
Now my pool is just opened and still not warm enough to swim in
I'd like some global warming back...
My brain fart - Gabrielle (not Gustav) formed first (hence the 'earlier' alpha designator) but Humberto achieved Cat 1 status first.
Of course he was 'correct' - who needs a freakin' PhD in physics to get that one right?
Farmer's Almanac has a better predictive record than the AGW cult's computer models.
The Sun has a cycle of its own at we are experiencing an activity minimum at the moment so its got nothing to do with our activity here on earth.
Uh, Mann, Jones, Trenberth, Cook, Lewandosky, Schmidt, et. al.
But then even with them, they do not get it.
Someone a while back posted about Germany succes with 'renewable energy' using ofcourse the facts by consensus Wikipedia to bolster his claims. Well here is reality, Germans pay 20 billion euros for electricity with a market price of just over 3 billion euros http://www.edmontonjournal.com/business/Lamphier+Green+energy+forcing+ratepayers/8911105/story.html
Doesn't sound like a tenable position to hold if you want to stay competitive. Which is probably the reason Germany is abandoning this crazyass scheme Merkel vows to curb renewable energy subsidies
http://www.mail.com/int/business/markets/2146230-merkel-vows-to-curb-renewable-energy-subsidies.html
I was being facetious about Kaku being 'correct' about the 'law of averages' - no such law exists and I found it a bit unnerving that such a brilliant scientist would resort to the 'gambler's fallacy' to defend himself. Tells me they'll stoop to anything in defense of their pre-determined 'truth'. 'Course, I knew that already.
Petrossa, you fail to include (1) the future costs of global warming, (2) the ever increasing costs of (fossil) fuels and (3) that most of the money that is spent on solar panels can (in principle) stay in your own country (provided you build your own factories of course).
I wasn't referring to the cost of the electricity, I gave that example to show that it's possible on a large scale and in a modern thriving economy.
To be honest, I wouldn't give a shit about the cost. If it were implemented in my country (the Netherlands) then it would mean my country would be independent of the Middle East. No more billions and billions that are literally going up in smoke, but billions and billions that are spent in our own country.
The Netherlands are a net energy exporter, you're already spending it in your own country...
It's nice to see Netherlands is on board with creating NEW coal-fired power planets too.
We're gonna need a place to go eventually, so new coal-fired planets will help a bunch.
that or you'll be pushing daisies. again....long past caring.
starkers got hungry as I refuse to feed him anything that gave him gas
This is not true, the Netherlands are a net importer of energy. http://www.iea.org/stats/balancetable.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=NL
We export cheap gas and import expensive oil and not-so expensive coal, so we spend a lot of money on imports in the Netherlands. Also, we have already used up half of our gas reserves in the past 50 years, there is at most 50 years left before production rates will drop. Instead of waiting untill we reach a point of no return it would be better to start investing in alternative sources of energy. After all, it takes a long time to make changes to the energy infrastructure.
(Although the impact wouldn't be 100%, since most of the oil is used for industry, but even then it will save us a lot of money if we can run our cars on locally produced electricity).
The last few governments in the Netherlands weren't that great. They are more interested in saving some money in the short term than in making investments for the longer term.
Gas ain't cheap, and your refinement capacity is quite nice. After refinement is taken into consideration, your import/export value on oil products are nearly even, not riding around 2/1 as implied by the calorie count.
What you could be doing is making a shitload of money off all that refining you do, instead of almost breaking even on oil.
Gas exported by the Netherlands is quite cheap. It is a lot cheaper than gas sold to Dutch citizens for example.
Refining solves nothing, because before you can refine oil, you need to import it. That costs a lot of money. The less we need to import, the less money we burn up. And on a sidenote, refining oil that's that used to burn up in cars is a complete waste of effort, if one can run cars just a nicely on electricity.
Take it whichever way you wish to believe in - http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/09/a-turning-point-for-the-ipcc-and-humanity/
Refining solves nothing eh? Gasoline is only a percentage of the use, and gas itself sells for far more than the raw input. Even at $100 a barrel, there are 42 Gallons in there, only about 19 get turned into gasoline. The rest of it is all worth far more money. You seem to be under the impression that the raw input is a great cost to your society, it's not.
Oil refining on the whole is like shitting gold bricks. They don't make squat off the gasoline, but they don't need to because it's essentially a waste product. Before the combustion engine, they were burning most of it off for nothing. A hundred bucks in crude is thousands in economic output. The libs make this out like it's the work of the devil, as if the oil companies make thousands in profit off every barrel of oil. It's true as far as your economy is concerned though. Your import costs are mostly from refined oil products because you have a very high standard of living. 1 car for every 2 people is pretty ritzy compared to most of the world, so you export the other, more valuable products, and import gasoline.
Your caloric numbers look terrible, lots of energy in it, but not much value. Your economic numbers say you damn near break even on the petrol. The natural gas sales result in a pretty substantial export profit over your imports on petroleum products. It does a lot to pay the bills for your commie government.
Our commie government doesn't seem to be smart enough to figure that out, so they've been killing off refineries as fast as they can...
It actually is quite revolutionary (not Dr Spencer's comments per se, but the admission by the IPCC). It is the first time they have indicated (note: not admitted) that maybe they over played the hype.
Psychoak, have you ever done math ... have you ever seriously thought of the future in terms of production/cost ... I doubt it. You are like most people who are content with what they have now and think that it will always be that way.
Perhaps try viewing energy in terms of food and view food supply in terms of the supermarket and nothing else. No farming, just what's in the supermarket. That's a finite supply just like oil, coal, gas.
A supermarket has a lot of food and it is a seemingly endless supply for you. Day after day, year after year you can go to the supermarket and buy food. But some day, the shelves are almost empty and the prices skyrocket. Some time later, the shelves are completely empty, you go hungry.
What do you do then? Well, you grow your own food or you hire someone to grow it for you. Why: because you have no choice.
And while you were going hungry, you wished you had thought of that a lot sooner, because crops take a while to grow. And you have to build a furnace to bake your bread. And you've to make pots for marmelade and honey. And so on.
Your commie government will collapse your economy and make you starve, not peak oil. So will mine, assuming they haven't already managed the necessary factors...
Peak oil will come, maybe in five years, maybe in fifty. We find more oil every day, some of it difficult to extract, some of it not. Regardless, peak oil is when it's time to start trying to find replacements, not when everyone is doomed. When it hits, it will be decades, possibly centuries, before oil is no longer a major factor in production. The costs will naturally rise, spurring serious investment in alternative fuel sources by people interested in making money.
When it makes sense, a bunch of rich people will throw away their own damned money on stupid projects, instead of government forcing everyone to do it. The smart ones will throw it away on less stupid projects(smart and government not being a combination one sees in life) and increase the sizes of their fortunes.
Necessity is the mother of invention, not government funding. You live in a fantasy land if you expect good things to come from a collection of corrupt swindlers that lie for a living and use their power to pay back the people that got them there.
It's nice to see the effects of the lack of global warming already. This must mean they'll stop beating the dead horse soon. I eagerly await the next subject change following the loss of this argument.
^^ Nail, meet hammer. KAHBAM
Peak oil is a point of no return. The global economy can only function if there is a steady and plentyful supply of oil. Peak oil means that production rate drops. It will probably drop pretty quickly since by that time, most oil will be produced from small and vulnerable oil fields and the bigger oil fields with a more stable production rate will already be well into their production decline. The disruption in the oil supply will mean that parts of the world economy will shut down - but only after a pretty steep competitive rise in oil prices which will hit the global economy. The weakest parts of the world economy will shut down first because they cannot pay the higher prices. A while later the wealthier parts of the world economy will break down too.
Do you also realize that this has a significant effect on food prices? Fertilizers are made from oil. Oil is needed for transportation of food from farms to cities. Oil is needed to run farming equipment. Oil is needed for the plastics that are used to package food. If oil prices skyrocket, then so will the price of food.
Do you really want to wait for that ...
This only shows that you have a fundamental lack of understanding about statistics. Global warming is a long-term phenomenon, and you cannot make conclusions from few glitches in an otherwise well-established pattern.
I think that by this you mean to say that in 10 years from now nothing will have happened because in the last 10 years nothing significant happened (I think you refer to a flat-line in global temperature in the last decade).
I state that in 50 years from now a lot will have happened because in the last 50 years a lot has happened.
My statement is statistically more significant. Yours is statistically more or less meaningless because you're ignoring a large part of the data and focus on a tiny bit of data.
And this is also so untrue. Governments fund a lot of fundamental academic research, which is used in every aspect of life. Results from fundamental research are also used by companies.
Also, necessity is not the mother of invention. It's imagination and creativity which fuels progress.
When necessity hits, that doesn't mean that new things are invented. Necessity means that there's no time left to explore new ideas and do long-term research. After all, research takes a lot of time, new ideas and insights don't come on demand and need time to mature. When necessity hits, existing ideas are explored, expanded and implemented world-wide. It will be a forced process where policy-makers will determine which ideas will be viable and which are not, it will not a natural process.
Take the Apollo program for example. Some policy maker said: make a big rocket to go to the moon. And sure, within a few years there was a behemoth rocket. However, since then a lot of slower research was done and nowadays rockets are a lot better than the Apollo rocket. Not because of necessity, but because there's time.
Governments don't fund anything, taxpayers do.
Guess the dead horse still doesn't get to rest...
When you finally surrender your pride on the global warming front, let me know.
Peak oil will hit when there's still about half the world's supply of oil remaining(this isn't a wild guess, it's the statistical results from a great deal of study on historical similarities, and the realities of oil fields). It will result in a slow, gradual production decline. The major fields will not be empty, there will be no sharp decline in production. It is not a precipitous event, we just had a peak in oil production and no one even noticed.
The world oil production flat lined from 2005 to 2011, because of our wonderful little recession. Life continued unabated. World oil production is already increasing at a significantly slower rate than previous demand was, yet nothing is happening to the price. Why? Crazy fools all around the world are driving natural gas cars, electric cars, biofuel cars(these are laughable) and doing things besides driving in the first place.
There are tens of millions of people in this country who can radically change their petroleum footprint at minimal cost to themselves. Massive quantities of fertilizer are being pissed down the drain right now on these absurd ethanol programs. If you think the world is going to come to a calamity because of peak oil, you have been paying zero attention to how utterly fucked you are. We are so royally screwed by the idiots we put into office every year, that we could take peak oil in stride for a decade without even noticing the loss if we just got rid of some stupidity.
Peak oil is a mythical disaster thought up by people that don't like fossil fuels for idiotic reasons, or just plain idiotic people. The production will peak because demand will fall off as the cost increases and they wont be able to make more money off of higher production. As more and more of the world economy is shifted to other power sources, like the massively plentiful but currently uneconomical direct solar output. Fertilizer usage can fall a long, long way before it even impact our food supply. Just stopping our idiotic ethanol subsidy would set the US back a decade in fertilizer usage and make fertilizer substantially cheaper worldwide. When our room for stupidity runs out, the answer is equally simple. People will stop eating overly large quantities of grain and meat. Poorer countries will give up most of the highly inefficient food sources, eating more soy, peanuts, various beans, very little beef. Most of the red meat consumed will be grass fed as it is now between the idiotic health craze and our ethanol driven price spike. Most of the meat consumed will be poultry and pork. Rich countries will cut back a bit, maybe stop being such fat ass populations, we're probably not that lucky though. World health will probably be improved a good bit.
Regardless, all of this is not likely to come to pass for a long time. The fear mongering has been substantial, but oil demand hasn't. If we hit peak oil soon it will be because demand fell off before we even got to maximum production capacity.
Yes, lets take the Apollo program. Some policy maker said lets go to the moon, and government fucked everything to hell for the next 40 years. Do you understand how astoundingly wasteful the shuttle program has been? They're a marvel, really, but government has been blowing billions on projects that have no economic benefit and could have been done massively cheaper to begin with. Every time we sent the shuttle up to deliver crap to the space station, we wasted money. Our old Apollo delivery system was both the superior and the cheaper choice for the job.
NASA is this great big fuck-up of an organization run into the ground by politicians. Has it had it's successes? Sure has. So did Hitler. Did he still think it was a bright idea to invade Russia when he was already busy?
ICBM's, now there's some necessity. We've got to be able to take out the Ruskies after all. Isn't it amazing how deadly our weapons are, and yet for space flight we designed the shuttle, an accident prone POS with massive upkeep costs that's been a train wreck of a program since inception. They fail billion dollar missions regularly, meanwhile private enterprise puts hundreds of satellites into orbit without a hitch.
Government research gets us shrimp on a treadmill, the mating habits of fruit flies, how many nuts the spring breaker consumes with their alcohol. The CDC just called me a couple days ago for a survey, they were looking into the health of children ages 1-9 and 14-17, in households owning a cell phone. I'm paying for that. I wish I was lying, I really do. Government research is a collection of wasted money with the odd success. It's like cutting firewood blindfolded and having someone spin you around first. You might actually get some chopped, but overall the exercise is going to be a colossal waste of time. It might even kill you. God only knows how many people have gotten killed over our idiotic government's research grants. They've outlawed so many completely harmless chemicals that it's hilarious, and typically replaced them with "safe" alternatives that are actual problems. Privately funded research designs a new sugar substitute worth hundreds of millions in revenue, publicly funded research decides it causes cancer because rats get bladder stones when they consume more than humanly possible. Which sugar substitute I'm talking about depends on what fucktard government you've been blessed to reside under, one or the other. Occasionally both, is illegal in pretty much every post industrialization country on the planet.
When there is a serious problem, or at the least they think there's a serious problem, like Stalin taking over Europe(which they countered with a bluff), government can be, relatively, effective. Outside of that, you're pretending the impacts of doing nothing will be catastrophic in order to convince yourself that a massive drain on the productivity of society as a whole is going to eventually pay itself off by averting the catastrophe you've had to convince yourself is coming. Private enterprise has two benefits government will never be able to match, they're spending their own money, and they suffer the direct consequences of their failures.
Remember....when Politics comes....this thread goes...
...from here...
We have been hearing about (and being terrorized by) "peak oil" since the 70s. Yet it has yet to arrive. Oil is actually very ecological for those who study history. It was oil (and the associated by products) that saved the whales. Before someone struck a match to the ground in Latrobe Pennsylvania, Whales were being hunted to extinction for their "oil". Once a substitute was found that was cheaper and more economical (Greenpeace and PETA were not around in those days, so no one thought about "saving the whales"), the demand for whales dried up (Eskimos and Japanese still hunted them for the meat).
As oil becomes harder and harder to extract, it will cost more and more. And then one day, some bright kid will "put a match" to some other source and find out the same thing. That Energy source XYZ is cheaper and more economical than oil. And when that happens, no one will care about peak oil any more. It will be peak fission or fusion or hydrogen or whatever it is.
That is a lesson of history. It has been repeated countless times in history, yet so many ignore it or are just plain ignorant of it. But the laws of supply and demand will not be denied. Oil is not the future. It is merely powering the vehicle to the future. And will be discarded once it has served its purpose.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
