Science & Technology

Rant

Recent Disasters Evidence of Climate Change?

Posted 12 months ago|24 comments|579 views
Roll On Mighty River
Written by
Altruist
Eugene, OR
The flood swollen Mississippi has been likened to an Anaconda which has swallowed a pig. You can see the bulge as it moves down the snake. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/...

What do you do if you are downriver of the floods? You know the floods are coming, you are warned to evacuate the area. You load up your car with your most precious possessions and try to get the rest up in the attic or up to the second floor, before you head to higher ground. If you have time you load up sand bags and try to build your own dikes.

What do you do when hundred year floods come every ten years or sooner? Substantial levies that you thought would never be breasted in your lifetime are being overwhelmed.

Every year New Orleans sinks further below the Mississippi. You have to look up at the ships passing by on the other side of the levy. If this continues New Orleans will be three feet lower in a hundred years. http://www.npg.org/forum_series/iforums/...

FEMA has been overwhelmed lately with all of the disasters. They are running an $18 billion deficit. The costs of this year's floods will be over $4 billion just for the state of Mississippi alone. FEMA only collects 2/3rds of the revenue it needs and Congress is considering raising Flood Insurance rates. http://blog.al.com/live/2011/03/congress...

Record snow storms, then record numbers of tornadoes, record heat, record drought followed by record fires in Texas, and now the floods. http://www.examiner.com/energy-in-nation...

If all of that isn't really caused by human caused climate change, than God is surely punishing all of these folk for something. Recent polls indicate 58% think the recent disasters are evidence of climate change, while 40% think it is evidence of the biblical "End of Times". http://climateprogress.org/2011/03/25/ma...

So what can be done? Insurance company do not doubt Global Warming is happening. They know for a fact that people are going to have more floods, more tornadoes, more violent weather, and they are raising their rates accordingly. http://green.blorge.com/2011/01/increase...

30% of flood claims come from the same 1% of the people. Perhaps if you know that more floods will be coming, we shouldn't build in flood zones, or at least design the homes up on stilts, so they won't be damaged as much. If you live in Tornado Alley why not build underground homes or homes out of reinforced concrete? The same is true if you live in a forested area. Build your home so it is fireproof. The Insurance industry should allow lower rates for those who make their homes disaster proof.

If we know that there will be more disasters in the future, we should build up a disaster relief fund, paid for by the fossil fuel industries who are responsible for the climate change.

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COMMENTS
12 months ago: Al,

I think you might have something here on "climate change" ...I heard it is going to cool off tonight, and tomorrow it is going to get warmer. I wonder who would support a tax to build out-door air conditioners? I know you guys are already onto that !:]

Al, get some popcorn and relax and watch a documentary on "Climate Change" ...I don't agree with all of it, however there is some conflicting results in the secular science on the subject.

"CBC - Global Warming Doomsday Called Off"
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-...#
12 months ago: Fight Global Warming...er ....uh... Global Cooling....uh...er.. Climate Change.... eee oooo.....ur...Drastic Climate Change by taking away every body's freedom.

Right Al.
sunny2
sunny2
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Coloranter Raver
Coloranter Raver
Denver, CO
12 months ago: Unfortunately, this could be just the tip of the iceberg (no pun intended) of things to come. For over 2,000 years, we've been unwittingly releasing far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than has been able to be recaptured and trapped by the plants and the coral reefs. The increasing levels of carbon dioxide (which is more dense than air) create a blanket around the planet that traps the solar radiation that otherwise would radiate back into space. Little by little over the decaded and then centuries, this has caused all sorts of unforeseeable problems. There is no doubt that this is a human-made problem, and there is no way we could have known better. The problem is that now we do know better and to sit and deny it's happening or that we're the cause is just plain stupid. I'm sorry, I've been too nice about this for too long, and I'm done. If people want to be ignorant or make this a political issue because the first prominent politician to talk about it was a democrat, then so be it, but it's not poLitical, it's real.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: For over 18,000 years, the earth has been warming. Everyone should read this. Follow the money. See if you can find a fossil fuel donor behind it.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ag...
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: There is a lot of big money that the Fossil Fuel Industry is using to hire fake scientists willing to lie to spread doubt and to distort the truth. http://environment.about.com/od/globalwa...

This is a good investment for the Utilities who can pay someone $100,000 to prostitute their scientific principles. The utilities save millions with that modest investment. http://environment.about.com/b/2006/07/3...

The facts are however indisputable. The deniers cherry pick data to support their positions. The actual climatologists 95% of whom have reached consensus, have a vast amount of data, from recorded temps, to ice cores, to tree rings, to coral, and many other sources that all corroborate the evidence that the earth is warming. http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/climate-d...
sunny2
sunny2
12 months ago: The earth has a way of dealing with problems that we haven't a clue about.
I hear people say and believe that the World is coming to an end, and it is because they are scared. I cringe at the mentality.
What about the influence on the weather caused by La Nina and El Nino?
12 months ago: The implication of the Second Law is that the universe faces inevitable extinction.

Occupy until He comes.
sunny2
sunny2
12 months ago: We will most likely move away from this planet if all life faced extinction or live underground.
Of course, only the rich will be able to get a ticket for that ride. Doesn't World Without End mean forever. Whether it is here or somewhere else, life will go on. At least the immigrant issues will be resolved if we move out but mostly likely Congress' bickering won't.
Favorite Quotation - Jean Ryes - Novelists:
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."

12 months ago: Sunny2 - you have a wonderful heart and it comes out in your responses.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the earth as we know it now.

We now live on a planet where humanity is polluting the air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil that grows our food and feeds our livestock.

Radiation, chemicals and man made viruses and diseases are running amok on a planet we call our home.

I am forever the optimist however, aside from supernatural intervention, this planet is doomed.

We must do our part to preserve it as best we can. We must be responsible and hold those in power accountable in the meantime.

We are to be salt and light.

Occupy until He comes.
sunny2
sunny2
12 months ago: Thank you Huey.
I write to a few of you because I see the same characteristics that are genuinely nice, and I find everything said interesting. It is good to be optimistic because that is what makes everything right. We work towards it.
Let's hope this World is around for another few thousand decades and possibly there will be a turn around for the better.
Who's counting anymore? With NASA going toward privatizing space flights with private companys buying into it, I'm starting to wonder where we stand. I can just see space becoming polluted from greed and abuse. Sunny

Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: "We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)

"In the United States...we have to first convince the American People and the Congress that the climate problem is real."

former President Bill Clinton in a 1997 address to the United Nations

Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are...

former Vice President Al Gore
(now, chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management--
a London-based business that sells carbon credits)
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: "Researchers pound the global-warming drum because they know there is politics and, therefore, money behind it. . . I've been critical of global warming and am persona non grata."

Dr. William Gray
(Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado and leading expert of hurricane prediction )

"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."

Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits.... Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world."

Christine Stewart, former Minister of the Environment of Canada
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Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: I sincerely hope the deniers are right and that we will not have the catastrophic warming that most of the climatologists and the evidence suggests.

Dick Cheney said if there were 1% chance of Weapons of mass destruction we had to attack as if they were certain. There is a 95% chance of 2-4 degree centigrade rise in the temperature caused by our actions.

If we do not act on this possibility the best case is that we remain addicted to fossil fuels and it's associated poison, pollution and deaths. In the worst case If the oceans rise 15 ft, and the major droughts, tornado, hurricanes, floods etc. get much worse there will be trillions of dollars of property damage and millions of lives lost.

If on the other hand we act on the possibility and reduce our CO2 output to 350ppm we can limit the change and the damage done, but the CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 100 years so it will still get hotter and we will need to accommodate, by moving cities and millions of people inland or by building dikes.

If we act on the possibility and the science was all wrong, then we will benefit by our renewable energy. We will no longer be dependent on tyrants and we will no longer be funding terrorists. Because of our cleaner technologies we might be able to nurse the oceans and reefs and fisheries back to health and we might be able to replant the tropical rainforests and restore balance to the earth.

So there are only two possibilities. Continue destroying the earth as we are currently. which is a loose loose proposition. we loose if the Global warming science is wrong and we really really loose bad if the science is right.

Or we can convert to sustainable policies and renewable energy which is a win win situation. If the science of Global Warming is wrong we will be much better off with cheaper cleaner fuel that is better for the planet. If the Science is right we will have averted catastrophic disaster, but will still have to adapt to warmer temperatures and more radical weather.

As Christine Stewart said above, we should work towards justice, equality, towards cleaner more sustainable policies for their own rewards even if Global Warming science is wrong.
sunny2
sunny2
12 months ago: Al
I have no doubt that the scientific facts point out that Global Warming exist.
Those that elude those facts are only justifying non action and worse conditions to come.
The suggestions you made are good and make sense. You don't hear of many delegates willing to take that argument on. If they sit on their hands too long and do nothing, they will be sorry. Government will be side- tracked even with tremendous disasters going on in the States, they will shift their attention to something else. Who knows what it will take to shake these people up to make them see the importance of Global Warming effects.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: Good points, and glad to see some honesty. We just don't need to hide behind a smokescreen of man-made climate change to redistribute wealth and to level the economic playing field. We need to be honest in our pursuit of providing a means to affordable non-polluting energy, and make that our goal. It is definitely do-able, and more people will get on board and even get excited about doing it if we are above board about the whole thing.
12 months ago: Altruist, dead on the money. technology exists today for a major shift toward renewable energy utilization. Small wind turbines on each and every building, same with solar cells. Immediately, we create a situation where a % of the energy used in a home is self generated.

Add mid-size local generating projects from geo-thermal where appropriate and suddenly we have a situation where the planet is starting to give us energy for free without emissions. Saw an interesting high school science fair project. The team (2 grade 111 students) came up with a working model of having a paddle wheel system build into the sewer system. As water moved around the paddle wheel were turned and generated additional power.

These and many other ideas exist now, the technology exists, and all we need is the will to implement. Alone, will these ideas solve all our energy problems -- no. Bet once we get started the innovation will follow. The enhancements to existing ideas and technology and the development of new ideas and technology will take us further down the road than we can fathom.
sunny2
sunny2
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Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: The technology is there and in many of the other developed nations the governments are giving substantial incentives to develop those technologies. The US is falling behind and may not be able to compete in clean energy.
The government of France plans to have 23% of its electricity generated from renewable energy sources including hydroelectric by 2020. A feed-in tariff of 30 Euro cents for commercial buildings has been introduced to encourage solar energy growth.

France now exceeds Denmark in wind energy capacity after adding 950 MW in 2008. The country currently has 3,400 MW of wind power and plans to increase this to 25,000 MW by 2020.

Bulgaria's Clever Synergies Investment Fund plans to finance three wind farms totaling 200 MW in northeast Bulgaria near the Black Sea. Current capacity is a mere 16.5 MW.

The government introduced a feed-in tariff in 2007 for renewable energy for a 12-year duration. The rates vary by energy source and are much higher for photovoltaic solar energy than wind power or small-scale hydroelectric.

The parliament of Greece recently approved a robust feed-in tariff for solar energy. The feed-in tariff provides $ .40 a kWh for systems that are less than 100 kilowatts.

http://ecolocalizer.com/2009/04/13/new-e...

China invests more than any other nation in environmentally friendly energy production: $34 billion in 2009, or twice as much as the United States.

China was responsible for half of the world's production of solar panels in 2010. In wind power, China both produces and consumes. In 2009, it put up about a third of the world's new wind turbines.

German's Solar Energy Market is the biggest in the world by a fair margin.Germany installed almost 6 gigawatts of solar panels in 2010 taking the total installed capacity to almost 16 GW which is 40% of the world's total installed solar capacity.Note Germany's Photovoltaic Solar Electricity now forms almost 10-15% of the total electricity production in the country at peak time.Note Germany's solar industry got a renewed boost when 7 old nuclear plants were shutdown following Japan's Fukushima Nuclear Disaster recently.
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: But let's not forget nitrogen triflouride, used in the manufacturing of solar panels. It's a greenhouse gas 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and hangs around in the atmosphere for 700 years. As of now, the atmospheric levels of NF3 have increased by a factor of twenty over the last twenty years. The rate of increase is over 11% per year, and is exponentially increasing with the increase of solar panel production.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/...
Out Of The Box
Out Of The Box
 Moderator
12 months ago: And a solar array that would power 90% of the US would have to be 30,000 square miles, preferably somewhere in the southwest.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: Most of the arguments for Nuclear power and against clean renewable power is that renewable are not continuous.

New Sodium Sulfur batteries could store up the energy for an entire neighborhood of photovoltaic rooftop installations and provide power through the night. These mini circuits would also provide a buffer against blackouts. These batteries can also be used to save wind or other types of periodic power.

Hybrid Natural gas solar thermal plants would provide free power whenever the sun is shining and natural gas would use the same turbines to provide continuous power when the sun goes down or if storms hinder the PV.

These plants could be up and running in a year while nuke plants take 10 years, and they would be considerably cheaper, and could be financed by individual utilities, something no utility can do with nuclear.
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: Off shore wind farms are being approved off the Atlantic Coast. They are planning on connecting all of these wind farms with a high capacity DC power grid. Why not also include tidal and wave generators and hook them up to the same grid?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42959018/ns/...
12 months ago: Our investment in conventional fossil fuel power sources is massive and the industry surrounding that investment is even bigger. There is far too much money in place to 'manage' the political situation that will make a transition difficult at best.

Perhaps a gas price of $7 - $8 per gallon and power costs to match would actually drive a revolution.

235 years ago, the U.S. shed one form of despotism. I think it might very soon be time for the same thing to happen again. This time the despots to be overthrown, are the big businesses that have taken over the governments and have effectively put the interest of a small handful of very wealthy shareholders ahead of the welfare of the society that is supposed to be their customers.
sunny2
sunny2
12 months ago: I had gone to Mexico one year and the gas prices were 13.00 a gallon.
That was the first time I experienced this. I had a rented car which didn't do me any good. We are being bullied. How long are we going to take it?
Altruist
Altruist
Eugene, OR
12 months ago: Nitrogen trifloride and carbon tetrafloride are used to clean silicon cells. There has been a lot of advancement in using things like orange oil as an alternative. This points out the importance of the EPA and OSHA and other organizations designed to protect the environment and the people working in these factories.

The technology I think will also move away from silicon cells because it is an expensive proposition to grow and slice up the crystals. Vapor deposition of amorphous silicon and organic dyes on thin film materials will be much cheaper and less destructive to the environment as we increase production and research in these areas.

Yes we need to invest in new infrastructure to compete with other nations. There are many companies wanting to build solar plants in the desert but they are hampered by a lack of transmission lines. AC transmission looses as much as 50% of the energy to heat losses. DC transmission lines would save a lot of power, and would enable the wind plants in the Dakotas , the solar in the South and the Wind, tidal, wave, off the Atlantic and Pacific to get energy to the big cities. Most of our Nuclear plants are past theri design life and now are becoming more brittle and more unsafe. They should be retired and replaced with renewable energy.

The Republicans are tools of the Fossil Fuel Industries so they will resist any attempts to progress into 21st century energy policies.

The austerity measures of the Republicans will hinder our economic growth and development, while the rich and powerful refuse to pay their fair share, and while they refuse to cut our largest spending source- the Military.

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