Global Warming

The Earth will survive no matter what we do to ourselves. Mother Earth couldn't care less about us. If we kill each other off, the world will still turn.

The global warming debate isn't about saving Mother Earth. It's about saving our asses. We're spewing BILLIONS of tons of toxic crap into the air, ground and water. This has an effect on everything -- from the way crops grow to the way weather patterns develop.

We act like the exhaust coming out of our tailpipes disappears into thin air. It doesn't -- it makes an impact. Just look at the Houston skyline. The air is BROWN. You can't say man-made chemicals don't affect the atmosphere.

You scoff because it's hard to imagine the human species dying out. But we evolved and adapted to THIS environment. It took millions of generations, but we're able to thrive in the current atmosphere. And now we're changing the environment. How do we know we'll be able to adapt to the inevitable coming changes?

Given these HUGE questions, I think a modest reduction in pollution a very reasonable request.

 

I think improving MPG in cars, cutting fossil fuel usage and aggressively developing alternative energy sources are very modest proposals.

But giant "energy" corporations have such a stranglehold on government regulations (they write 'em and enforce 'em) that it's ridiculous to think they're going to say, "Hey, let's sacrifice the short-term profit for the long-term good of the world." That's not how capitalism works.

That's why the Kyoto Treaty is so important to reducing the chances of cataclysmic climate changes.

 

The key to stopping global warming and making big business happy at the same time? Nuclear Power plants, they are clean and the waste produced can be stored until the technology is available for Breeder reactors which run on spent fuel from a traditional reactor. We've witnessed the worst possible scenario with the Chernobyl disaster, and the effects overall have been much less than originally feared. The reactors in the former Soviet Union have little protection when compared with modern reactors in France, Japan, and the US--they are very safe even if there was a major meltdown.

 

As someone who lives within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor, I respectfully disagree.

Talk about scary: an oil refinery has a fire, it makes the news and then everyone forgets about it. A nuclear plant has a fire, and it's a dead zone for 1,000 years. And then there's the waste...

A wind farm half the size of North Dakota (though not concentrated in one place, obviously) would give us enough power to drastically reduce or even eliminate fossil fuels from our energy diet.

Think about it: one push from our government, and we have all the energy we need forever. No more Gulf Wars. No more pollution.

It's 100-percent possible. I just wish it was likely.

 

Is nuclear fuel cheaper if you include the cost for security for the unspent fuel and the waste for 50000 years? You can't just guard some of this stuff - you have to maintain the containers, at Diablo Canyon, if the cooling tanks go dry, supposedly the waste stuff could melt through containers, evaporate and contaminate all of southern California. The waste includes not only the spent fuel but all the materials contaminated by proximity to the fuel.

Cheap power now, future generations pay for it. Makes as much sense as tax cuts to fund the government.

 

Aloha. I really enjoyed this speech by President Bush. Here are some excerpts. Frickin' hippie tree-hugger. He surely has no idea what he's talking about. Dang environmentalist, where'd he get all his information? Traitor.

President Bush Announces Clear Skies & Global Climate Change Initiatives
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Silver Spring, Maryland

2:05 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much for that warm welcome. It's an honor to join you all today to talk about our environment and about the prospect of dramatic progress to improve it.

Today, I'm announcing a new environmental approach that will clean our skies, bring greater health to our citizens and encourage environmentally responsible development in America and around the world.

America and the world share this common goal: we must foster economic growth in ways that protect our environment. We must encourage growth that will provide a better life for citizens, while protecting the land, the water, and the air that sustain life.

In pursuit of this goal, my government has set two priorities: we must clean our air, and we must address the issue of global climate change. We can begin now to address the human factors that contribute to climate change. Wise action now is an insurance policy against future risks.

Today, I'm confident that the environmental path that I announce will benefit the entire world. This new approach is based on this common-sense idea: that economic growth is key to environmental progress, because it is growth that provides the resources for investment in clean technologies.

We will apply this approach first to the challenge of cleaning the air that Americans breathe. Today, I call for new Clean Skies legislation that sets tough new standards to dramatically reduce the three most significant forms of pollution from power plants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury.

This legislation will constitute the most significant step America has ever taken -- has ever taken -- to cut power plant emissions that contribute to urban smog, acid rain and numerous health problems for our citizens.

Clean Skies legislation will not only protect our environment, it will prolong the lives of thousands of Americans with asthma and other respiratory illnesses, as well as with those with heart disease. And it will reduce the risk to children exposed to mercury during a mother's pregnancy.

Now, global climate change presents a different set of challenges and requires a different strategy. The science is more complex, the answers are less certain, and the technology is less developed. So we need a flexible approach that can adjust to new information and new technology.

I reaffirm America's commitment to the United Nations Framework Convention and it's central goal, to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate.

Overall, my budget devotes $4.5 billion to addressing climate change -- more than any other nation's commitment in the entire world. This is an increase of more than $700 million over last year's budget. Our nation will continue to lead the world in basic climate and science research to address gaps in our knowledge that are important to decision makers.

We'll devote $588 million towards the research and development of energy conservation technologies. We must and we will conserve more in the United States. And we will spend $408 million toward research and development on renewables, on renewable energy.

This funding includes $150 million for an initiative that Spence Abraham laid out the other day, $150 million for the Freedom Car Initiative, which will advance the prospect of breakthrough zero-emission fuel cell technologies.

My comprehensive energy plan, the first energy plan that any administration has put out in a long period of time, provides $4.6 billion over the next five years in clean energy tax incentives to encourage purchases of hybrid and fuel cell vehicles, to promote residential solar energy, and to reward investments in wind, solar and biomass energy production.

By doing all these things, by giving companies incentives to cut emissions, by diversifying our energy supply to include cleaner fuels, by increasing conservation, by increasing research and development and tax incentives for energy efficiency and clean technologies, and by increasing carbon storage, I am absolutely confident that America will reach the goal that I have set.

Addressing global climate change will require a sustained effort over many generations. My approach recognizes that economic growth is the solution, not the problem. Because a nation that grows its economy is a nation that can afford investments and new technologies.

We recognize our international responsibilities. So in addition to acting here at home, the United States will actively help developing nations grow along a more efficient, more environmentally responsible path.

The hope of growth and opportunity and prosperity is universal. It's the dream and right of every society on our globe. The United States wants to foster economic growth in the developing world, including the world's poorest nations. We want to help them realize their potential, and bring the benefits of growth to their peoples, including better health, and better schools and a cleaner environment.

It would be unfair -- indeed, counterproductive -- to condemn developing nations to slow growth or no growth by insisting that they take on impractical and unrealistic greenhouse gas targets. Yet, developing nations such as China and India already account for a majority of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, and it would be irresponsible to absolve them from shouldering some of the shared obligations.

I will intend to work with nations, especially the poor and developing nations, to show the world that there is a better approach, that we can build our future prosperity along a cleaner and better path.

The new budget also provides $40 million under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act to help countries redirect debt payments towards protecting tropical forests, forests that store millions of tons of carbon. And I've also ordered the Secretary of State to develop a new initiative to help developing countries stop illegal logging, a practice that destroys biodiversity and releases millions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

And, finally, my government is following through on our commitment to provide $25 million for climate observation systems in developing countries that will help scientists understand the dynamics of climate change.

To clean the air, and to address climate change, we need to recognize that economic growth and environmental protection go hand in hand. Affluent societies are the ones that demand, and can therefore afford, the most environmental protection. Prosperity is what allows us to commit more and more resources to environmental protection. And in the coming decades, the world needs to develop and deploy billions of dollars of technologies that generate energy in cleaner ways. And we need strong economic growth to make that possible.

Americans are among the most creative people in our history. We have used radio waves to peer into the deepest reaches of space. We cracked life's genetic code. We have made our air and land and water significantly cleaner, even as we have built the world's strongest economy.

When I see what Americans have done, I know what we can do. We can tap the power of economic growth to further protect our environment for generations that follow. And that's what we're going to do.

Thank you. (Applause.)

 

Breeder reactor technology would use the fuel down to a fraction of its original amount with-- NO sulfur, CO2, fine particulate matter (soot), mercury, low level ozone, etc. (the list is very long) from coal and oil refineries. France and Japan have the most advanced nuke programs and are further along with breeder reactor tech. we need to catch up.
I look at nuclear power as a compromise, I would love to see more wind farms (the Dutch have proven this works) solar energy, and above all simple refinements of household utility items. Products in the US are specifically designed to consume more electricity than necessary, or in other words they could be much more efficient than they are currently designed. So many simple things could be done by the general population such as switching to fluorescent lighting turning your stereo completely off (products left on standby consume large amounts of power), computers and monitors off-- again the list is long.
All of this combined would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and coal and reduce greenhouse emissions (it would also lower your electric bill).

 

KingCheetah why don't more countries adapt breeder tech? IIRC France shut down all of it's fast breeders and Japan has been plagued by problems in fast breeders.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,883652,00.html

 

Its just a developing technology with many problems to be worked out like any new tech. The promising thing about it is that stored nuclear waste could be used again once the tech is perfected. Thats why I like it so much, all the waste produced could actually be considered fuel reserves. What I would really like to see is every house with solar panels on the roof and rainwater collection systems. Wind farms are nice, but they do take up alot of space (we certainly have that in West Texas though).

 

Word my brotha!

 

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993798


Global warming's sooty smokescreen revealed


19:00 04 June 03

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition

Smoke is clouding our view of global warming, protecting the planet from perhaps three-quarters of the greenhouse effect. That might sound like good news, but experts say that as the cover diminishes in coming decades, we are in for a dramatic escalation of warming that could be two or even three times as great as official best guesses.

This was the dramatic conclusion reached last week at a workshop in Dahlem, Berlin, where top atmospheric scientists got together, including Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen and Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin, former chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

IPCC scientists have suspected for a decade that aerosols of smoke and other particles from burning rainforest, crop waste and fossil fuels are blocking sunlight and counteracting the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions. Until now, they reckoned that aerosols reduced greenhouse warming by perhaps a quarter, cutting increases by 0.2 °C. So the 0.6 °C of warming over the past century would have been 0.8 °C without aerosols.

But the Berlin workshop concluded that the real figure is even higher - aerosols may have reduced global warming by as much as three-quarters, cutting increases by 1.8 °C. If so, the good news is that aerosols have prevented the world getting almost two degrees warmer than it is now. But the bad news is that the climate system is much more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously guessed.

As those gases are expected to continue accumulating in the atmosphere while aerosols stabilise or fall, that means "dramatic consequences for estimates of future climate change", the scientists agreed in a draft report from the workshop.


Parasol effect


Past calculations of the cooling effect of aerosols have been inferred from "missing" global warming predicted by climate models. But direct measurements reported in Science (vol 300, p 1103) in May by Theodore Anderson of the University of Washington in Seattle show a much greater parasol effect. Anderson says climate sensitivity could be larger than climate models suggest.

The Berlin meeting also heard evidence that past warm eras had higher temperatures than they ought to, if estimates of the atmospheric composition at the time and greenhouse models are correct. Again this suggests greater sensitivity.

"It looks like the warming today may be only about a quarter of what we would have got without aerosols," Crutzen told New Scientist. "You could say the cooling has done us a big favour. But the health effects of many aerosols in smog are so great that even in the poor world, they are already cutting emissions." For good reasons, aerosol levels look set to fall.

Moreover, most aerosol emissions only stay in the atmosphere for a few days. Most greenhouses gases remain for a century or longer. So as time goes on, aerosols will protect us less and less from global warming. "They are giving us a false sense of security right now," said Crutzen.




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'Sooner, not later'


One tentative estimate put warming two or even three times higher than current middle-range forecasts of 3 to 4 °C based on a doubling of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which is likely by late this century.

That suggests global warming well above the IPCC maximum forecast of 5.8 °C. Back-of-the-envelope calculations now suggest a "worst case" warming of 7 to 10 °C.

Will Steffen of the Swedish Academy of Sciences says the message for policy makers is clear: "We need to get on top of the greenhouse gas emissions problem sooner rather than later."


Fred Pearce, Berlin