Global Warming prog on Channel4

Re: Heads in the sand

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>I cannot think of a single scientific prediction on the time scale of 50+ years that has been borne out.<

Space flight. Antibiotics. Micro-surgery. Transistors. Boring, isn't it.

Any way, for one of your persuasion, now would be a good time to snap up a ski chalet!

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Antibiotics - "Although the principles of antibiotic action were not discovered until the twentieth century, the first known use of antibiotics was by the ancient Chinese over 2,500 years ago." i.e. not a prediction of science but a discovery.
As you only object to this statement in my post I assume you agree with the rest?
PS I already have one
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

So lets get this right!
You sell an African peasant in the third world (perfectly legitimate terminology) what? A windmill? A hybrid car? A solar panel to put on the roof of his hut?
Have you been to Africa? I have! Millions of Africans are dying of AIDS. Malaria is still endemic. So is Tuberculosis. The drugs are available in this first world of ours to solve the problem. THE TECHNOLOGY EXISTS BUT THEY CANT AFFORD THE PRICE!!! And you want to what!!!! SELL or LICENCE new technologies to them???
And you call me PATRONISING!!!!
Sorry for the capitals old chum but you need to go to these places and see who it is that we are stopping from having electricity because we say they should not burn fossil fuels like we do. All I can say is that the exponents of the theories that are responsible for telling the third world what it can't do had better be sure they are right.... and I'm not anymore...
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

My experience of Africa is very limited, but I have recently returned from my third trip to Morocco, mainly spent in rural parts. Because these trips were well spaced out (20 then 9 year gap, respectively) changes were very evident. Last trip the striking difference was the proliferation of solar panels and satellite dishes on houses far from mains electricity and terrestrial TV broadcasts, this time it was mobile phones: excellent network coverage far from any land lines. They have simply skipped over complete chunks of technological development that the West has experienced - and why not?

Something similar is happening in China: it now leads the world in construction of super-critical coal fired power stations ("more efficient" in lay-speak), and both China and India are building hydro and nuclear. The fast developing countries have no need or reason to go through our "smoke stack" phase. Their CO2 emissions will still rise, but perhaps at a lower rate less than is sometimes suggested.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

Replying to Ken, cocked up reply doodah again!

Wikipedia.............

* The same carbon dioxide radiative forcing that produces near-surface global warming is expected (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) to cool the stratosphere. This, in turn, would lead to a relative increase in ozone depletion and the frequency of ozone holes.

* Conversely, ozone depletion represents a radiative forcing of the climate system. There are two opposed effects: Reduced ozone allows more solar radiation to penetrate, thus warming the troposphere instead of the stratosphere;


On Earth, the major natural greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes 9-26%; methane, which causes 4-9%, and ozone, which causes 3-7%.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Troposphere is heated, water vapour is more important than CO2......
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

Rather thought you were referring to China and India, not subsistence level peoples in Africa who, I suspect, don't have a detectable carbon footprint. And yes, I have been to Africa, and yes, in the major cities air pollution is appalling and if 'western' technology could do something to alleviate it, it would be A Good Thing, and certainly a better way for development aid to be spent than on building presidential palaces, buying arms or teaching Kenyans to grow green beans at knock-down prices for Waitrose.

Oh, and yes, solar water heating is commonplace in many African countries, and yes, they do use wind mills and photovoltaics and almost yes, big bad western capitalists are producing $100 computers to help increase educational levels, and spread knowledge in the one laptop per child campaign.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

Both you and Dave S are being selective. Morocco is relatively affluent compared with Tanzania for example, and the solar panels there are mainly for water heating not photovoltaics which has been an efficient method of heating water in many hot countries for some time. Where you do see photovoltaics they are usually bought by reasonably affluent Morrocans to run house lighting only because it is efficient and cost effective in that application. You can therefore see electric lighting in a house where the cooking is still being done on an old fashioned wood or dung fire. In Tanzania, the problem is they have difficulty finding clean water at all, forget heating it. If you want to drink water there you must boil it first. To boil water you need to burn fossil fuel! In China and other places everyone looks at Bejing and forgets that the majority of the population are peasants miles from anywhere. The cities are indeed polluted and in all these places life is cheap. What generally drags these places into the modern world is electricity, which is universally produced by burning fossil fuels. What the Kyoto agreement did was tell these countries that they should not develop industry based on fossil fuel combustion as ours is. The fact is that windmills, photovoltaics and other technologies apart from nuclear which is another subject, are universally based on fossil fuel combustion and sticking phitovoltaic cells on the roof only scratches the surface of the problem.
Didnt you see the programme where a hospital had been given a photovoltaic cell to either run an old fridge or the lights but couldn't do both? With a decent diesel gennie they could really save lives!
The fundamental truth here is that no new technologies are currently widely available to produce megawatts of electricity and in industrialised societies and there is only one technology that will produce electricity in useful quantities and thats Nuclear. SELLING or LICENCING this "new" technology to the third world will neither solve the problem of industrialisation nor can they afford it. If we want them to have it rather than burn fossil fuels we have to give it to them not sell it to them. So far no one is prepared to even give them medicine which is freely available over here. The profit motive still rules and all this ideological talk is hypocracy
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

"old fashioned wood or dung fire"

Very sustainable. Non fossil fuel. And I'm not being patronising. In fact we've just installed a wood-burning stove as a replacement for electrcial space heating.

"With a decent diesel gennie they could really save lives!"
And the gennie could run on biofuel, or methane from decaying animal wastes. Or take a look at what a client of mine is doing...

...Apart from waste heat, and heat from waste disposal by-products, there's also natural heat for Freepower to make use of. One intriguing source currently being investigated is capturing solar heat and storing it in hot rocks, to provide 24x365 electrical production, something not possible using photovoltaics unless the major overhead of battery banks is incurred.

Freepower

As to giving, rather than selling or licensing, if there's no profit motive, there's no innovation. Far better to involve people as development partners and customers, than just to say "take this".
 
Woodburning Stoves - less CO2??

"Very sustainable. Non fossil fuel. And I'm not being patronising. In fact we've just installed a wood-burning stove as a replacement for electrcial space heating."

How does ANY combustion process using carbon based fuels, including "a wood-burning stove", or non-fossil biofuels, reduce CO2 emmissions?

I'm not convinced that any technology such as this, will be any more beneficial than the powerstation producing the electricity for the now defunct space heaters.
 
Re: Woodburning Stoves - less CO2??

It doesn't reduce CO2, but because it's burning recently produced carbon (rather than fossil carbon) it releases only what has been taken out recently, so its more of a closed loop system. And it's using input (dung, wood, straw, etc) which can be quickly recreated, as opposed to fossil fuel which can only be recreated in geological timescales.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

[ QUOTE ]
So lets get this right!
You sell an African peasant in the third world (perfectly legitimate terminology) what? A windmill? A hybrid car? A solar panel to put on the roof of his hut?
Have you been to Africa? I have! Millions of Africans are dying of AIDS. Malaria is still endemic. So is Tuberculosis. The drugs are available in this first world of ours to solve the problem. THE TECHNOLOGY EXISTS BUT THEY CANT AFFORD THE PRICE!!! And you want to what!!!! SELL or LICENCE new technologies to them???
And you call me PATRONISING!!!!
Sorry for the capitals old chum but you need to go to these places and see who it is that we are stopping from having electricity because we say they should not burn fossil fuels like we do. All I can say is that the exponents of the theories that are responsible for telling the third world what it can't do had better be sure they are right.... and I'm not anymore...

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This is of course utter nonsense. I find one of the remarkable things here is the willingness of people to speak from positions of total ignorance. On another thread someone assured me that thermostable vaccines and mobile phones as an aid to development were “pie in the sky”! As DaveS correctly points out there is an opportunity for the developing world to skip a generation of technology. If they don’t the consequences will be dire regardless of climate change. Why force them to go through their own industrial revolution with all its human and environmental impacts?

The irony of the anti climate change lobby suddenly deciding they are saving the developing world is unbelievable.

I went on a boat once, (or better, my parents went on a boat several times) and I promise you that big flappy thing is called a sheet and it is powered by the wind generator at the back.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

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I find one of the remarkable things here is the willingness of people to speak from positions of total ignorance.

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You don't enhance your argument by resorting to insults. That really is a display of ignorance.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

I apologise if that appeared to be an insult. It was a simple observation based on posters' own claimed familiarity with the subject.


Perhaps I should have phrased it:

I find one of the remarkable things here is the willingness of people to speak from positions of a total lack of knowledge of the actual situation and issues on the ground.

As I tried to indicate, someone who came on here and started lecturing about boats without any knowledge or experience would not be well received.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

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The irony of the anti climate change lobby suddenly deciding they are saving the developing world is unbelievable.

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Who is anti climate change? I don't know of anyone on the forum that doesn't believe it is happening but a lot including me have doubts that it is caused by man made CO2 or that even if it were that the whole thing could be reversed when the demand for energy is increasing, not least from those that have none yet.

I was not trying to save the 3rd world at all, merely stating what some experts on a TV programme that you didn't even see had warned, that cutting emmissions was a severe threat to 3rd world growth. They were talking about a 3rd world needing industrial quantities of power not merely powering a nightlight from camel dung.

It was me too that said your giant leap in pharmaceutical technology was pie in the sky. This is the industry I have been in and around for over 40 years and I am all too well aware how long new product developments take and how much they cost. If you seriously believe that companies even governments will throw money at this, cut down the required years of testing and trials and then having spent their millions on develpment, sell the products at 3rd world affordable prices then that is in my book pie in the sky. In the meantime a bit of affordable power, in unlimited quantities will allow them to use existing cheaper products and not wait for manana to bring these new all-singing expensive ones, because believe me new stuff will cost dear.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

To my way of thinking (and I have been shouted down for saying this before on the forums), the programme made a lot of sense, and appeared to confirm many aspects of climate change that I had suspected.

1. The sun - a very minor change in the sun's level of activity would have a radical effect on our planet.

2. Volcanoes can output more gasses in a week than we do in a generation.

3. The planetary weather system is a vastly more complex mechanism than we can get even our best computers round to get any realistic predictions more than a few hours ahead. How then we can we say with ANY conviction what is likely to be happening by 2050. And dont give me statistical analysis, because for every prediction there is a counterprediction giving an opposite result from the same set of figures.

4. For every expert expressing an opinion either way, there is another - equally well qualified - expressing an opposite opinion. Only time will tell which is right.

5. Politicians have jumped on the band wagon for political reasons (surprise, surprise!) and have no actual commitment to the carbon policies other than as a fund raising and publicity exercise. If they were REALLY concerned I doubt if any of us would object to them raising taxes to fund REAL research into finding alternative energy sources.

It doesnt really matter which side of the argument you subscribe to. The actual need is urgently to find a sustainable way of producing energy and fuels from viable renewable sources which do not pollute and cause problems to the environment.

To me that is the real issue in this whole debate, and I see no evidence of either party actually putting their money where their mouths are, and seeking viable energy sources as a matter of any real urgency. Windpower is a classic NIMBY example. We know it makes sense but planning applications are fought with savage intensity to prevent any level of realistic developement. Which is actually more important - solving the power shortage problem without wrecking the planet, or the loss of a small degree of visual amenity? I continue to drive my car because there is no viable alternative. When there is I will get rid of it.

The issue facing us is not climate change per se IMHO, but the squandering of the planets resource of fossil fuels. We are literally burning our heritage, and possibly poisoning the atmosphere - another finite resource incidentally.

We only have a limited time to resolve these problems. Are we willing to use our wealth and technology to develop a viable and sustainable technology in the longer term, or are we going to continue squandering resources, polluting the environment, and bankrupting the planet while we argue about carbon output, taxing each other out of existence, but not actually doing anything to invest in the development of new viable and sustainable technologies and life-styles.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

Ah! Old Harry.
Wisdom with age.
You are of course right and must have been taking the sensible pills for some time.
Those who quote research and "facts" have normally found them on the internet. So that's reliable then.
Those of us who apply simple logic have come to the same conclusions as you.
It is of course sensible not to polute your own environment.
There are finite fuel resources and they need conserving.
We need to ensure our own existence is secure.

These facts are not invariably connected to "climate change" and "global warming" which are <u>not</u> interchangeable terms.

Politicians are by nature, concerned with political power, not energy resources.
They have, however spotted that they can use the concern over energy to raise capital, and form opinion to suit their own needs.

Some will follow, blindly, into the sheep pens whilst others, will stay out on the fells. We'll all die, but some at their own behest and others when the slaughterman decides.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

erm LAkesailor learn logic .. linkage has been created in your mind learn to think clearly and disassociate separate issues. Note to L's parents .. L has propensity to chatter and look at comics in class ..he'd be better off in domestic science learning cookery and photography.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

all very well, but I am of the slightly furrowed brow persuasion.... I mean, surely it's pretty obvious, yerknow, Scientists yes SCIENISTS, only one planet, and full repairig lease, hm?

Thus i quite quite like the idea of making a reasonable effort so we can sermonize to others, tut tut China, power station every week etc etc.

sepretly and stupid-waste-of fuel-wise I still reckon we shd outlaw buying/selling botled water for crissakes, esp from flippin France which use to be not long ago don't-drink-the-water country. How di they manage selling poxy Volvic?

Also ...neckties. Complete waste of resources, and serve no purpose whatsoever.
 
Re: Nothing to lose?

The problem is a full explanation would take pages and pages and then no one appears to notice, or LakeSailor does a Gludy and takes three words out of document and cries victory. True scientists caveat their opions, as they know not 100% full, so non scientists then say, look, they can't decide and say yes or no, so obviously full of cack.

Stations being built in China appear to be more advanced than most we have in europe (notice tendency of scientists to say 'appear to be more advanced' as I have some info but not 100% convinced or full of facts)
 
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