[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
In short, unless someone figures out how to make muon-catalyzed fusion sustainable or develops some kind of electrostatic confinement that is more efficient than the Farnsworth method, practical nuclear fusion for energy generation is decades out…
[/QUOTE]
Someone needs to start a list of “Top 10 Best Sentences on the SDMB” just so this sentence can go on it. 
[QUOTE=MrDibbleOh, and Scylla ?
Spoken like someone who doesn’t live in the Southern Hemisphere. The ozone hole? All too real, thank you very much. Bet you think Y2K was all a plot too, don’tchya?[/QUOTE]
Did something bad happen on y2k that I missed?
[QUOTE=Scylla]
Did something bad happen on y2k that I missed?
[/QUOTE]
Gods, where WERE you!!! The power grid shut down, all the financial institutes collapsed at once…it was mass chaos in the streets. Fire fell from the skys, dogs and cats were living together in unholy embrace, the lion not only lay down with the lamb…but he buggered the poor beast too boot!
It was a Mad Max nightmare of unrivaled proportions…
:eek:
-XT
[QUOTE=Scylla]
Did something bad happen on y2k that I missed?
[/QUOTE]
Yes, the gravy train of bad database design ended and the Computer Programming field has never been as good since. It was a sad, sad day.
Once I could change jobs at will, now I have to be another pathetic cubicle dwelling drone working for the best of the company.
Jim (Sr. Programmer/Analyst)
That was somewhat tongue-in-cheek and somewhat reality. The Y2K problem would have been bad if it was not addressed. It is actually a very good thing that the effort was made, however the doomsayers and especially the ignorant cries of the sky is falling was comical at the time to those of us “in the Trenches” staving off “Doomsday”.
[QUOTE=xtisme]
Gods, where WERE you!!! The power grid shut down, all the financial institutes collapsed at once…it was mass chaos in the streets. Fire fell from the skys, dogs and cats were living together in unholy embrace, the lion not only lay down with the lamb…but he buggered the poor beast too boot!
It was a Mad Max nightmare of unrivaled proportions…
:eek:
-XT
[/QUOTE]
Ohhhhhh yeah. Now that we’ve been reminded I’ll be sure and take global warming seriously.
This issue is one that really bugs me, because I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of the scientific community. I hear repeatedly about how there are 10s of thousands of scientists who support the standard view on global warming, then I get sent news article from real newspapers talking about how supposedly very few of the researchers in the field think that humans are necessarily the cause of the temperature increase. IIRC, they see such fluctuations in yearly average temperature over hundreds of years (looking at tree rings and taking ice cores) that this bump just doesn’t impress them.
Two yeas ago I was teaching physical science to 9th graders, and what the textbook said was that CO2 and water vapor absorbed infrared and broadcasted some of it back to ground, making a bit of a mirror effect. Is this not standard “fact”? If it is, then how can humans not be contributing, as we admit we are creating a lot of CO2 and water vapor, by burning all those hydrocarbons?
OTOH, is it also proved that plants etc are not compensating by absorbing more of the easily available CO2?
I wish this were as wide a consensus as evolution. And even then, you should see the “What is THIS among us?” looks I get when I bring it up in most churches. 
[QUOTE=Scylla]
Proponents like to make appeals to athority and say it’s generally accepted and most scientists agree with global warming, but that doesn’t make it so:
http://www.sitewave.net/PPROJECT/pproject.htm
[/QUOTE]
Were you perhaps joking by posting this? Do you have any familiarity with the scientific process at all? Collecting a bunch of names on a website has so little to do with “scientific consensus” it just isn’t true. Scientific consensus is a process of data analysis, peer review, and evolving ideas. What you have there is a bunch of utterly unverifiable “signatures” from people who have to offer no credentials whatsoever in order to join this supposed “consensus”. I just googled 20 names at random from the middle of this list, and came up with the following:
[ul][li]A nanotribologist (who studies the topology of nano-scale film growth)[/li][li]An expert on getting your email marketing strategy right[/li][li]A Professor of Horticulture[/li][li]A neurobiologist[/ul][/li]The other 16 entries I tried threw up no results except for the petition you cited. Twenty names at random (well, quasi-random: I chose distinctive names with doctorates to increase the chance that one of them might actually be qualified), and not one climate scientist or meteorologist. Not even a flipping TV weatherman. Observe the relevant petition card. One needs offer no qualification more exciting than a BS, and that not necessarily in any field relating to the climate. I, for example, have three different degrees. I could sign that petition and be one of the more imposing-looking names. But I know absolutely sod all about the climate; my degrees are in Computer Science and Engineering. What a coup for the cause!
Even were these people all qualified, and they most certainly are not, a petition is still not how science works; one doesn’t become a scientist one day, get given a badge and suddenly get to vote on what’s true or not. You actually have to use data and things, follow reproducible methods and submit your work to peer review. You don’t just conduct some ludicrous self-selecting exercise in getting your buddies to gang up on the people who disagree with you.
I don’t offer an opinion on global warming. My point is solely that using these pathetic petitions to bolster one’s opinion is about as valid as citing Ernie down at the Post Office who’s been a bit simple ever since the car accident. They are an absolute perversion of what science is supposed to be. You object to “appeals to authority”, as if listening to people who spend their life studying the very topic at hand is some sort of flaw, and then make an appeal to a veritable black hole of authority; an anti-authority, if you like. Well, fine; if you think it’s more sensible to listen to someone who specialises in cross-breeding geraniums than someone with an actual relevant degree, fine. But don’t pretend that your petition should convince a single soul of anything other than the ability of the internet to collect some names.
(I have continued googling names, and have discovered a chemical engineer, another neuroscientist, a historical novelist (!), a microprocessor designer and a minerologist and still not one climate scientist.)
A construction engineer, an electrical engineer (retd.), a psychologist (dead), a manufacturer of educational toys, a physical chemist, an accountant, a mathematician, a nuclear physicist, an anaesthesiologist, an animal ecology student, a stepladder inventor, a biochemist, a macroeconomist … the list goes on.
I can only give you my word that I am not filtering out by any process other than examining names which are distinctive (to cut down on mis-identification) and claim to have PhDs (to bolster the chances of finding an actually-qualified person). I have still not come across a single climatologist. I apologise for hammering this point into the ground, but I’m just absolutely sick of these petitions, and would love never to see them cited ever again.
[QUOTE=Dead Badger]
I apologise for hammering this point into the ground, but I’m just absolutely sick of these petitions, and would love never to see them cited ever again.
[/QUOTE]
Appears to be a slight whoosh – I’m pretty sure that Scylla agrees with you … and only brought up the petition to remind us that though it is very often cited, it is prima facie flawed.
Well, you may be right, but it seemed to me that Scylla was trying to rebut the alleged scientific consensus in favour of global warming’s existence, in which case it would be rather odd to cite a petition he believes to be invalid. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll be back to clear things up. I guess I just see these stupid things cited so often that I can’t help but assume it’s being done seriously.
Maybe the Earth is heating from the inside out? Rising ocean-floor temperatures have been noted, as well as new underwater volcanoes. Fissures are opening up all over the place, the massive crack that just opened up in my home state of Texas, the one in Ethiopia I know we all heard about.
Inside out. People need to stop blaming the Ozone layer and CO2 emissions. I mean, how is Ozone made anyways? We always smell it after a lightning strike, and when our TV sets burn up. Maybe the lightning storms our ancient ancestors spoke of actually happened? If they did then we really wouldn’t have to worry about the Ozone layer being depleted.
[QUOTE=What Exit]
…irregardless…
[/QUOTE]
Funny, I get more worked up by the use of this word than by global warming. I am not a good person.
[QUOTE=BMalion]
Funny, I get more worked up by the use of this word than by global warming. I am not a good person.
[/QUOTE]
If you are suggesting I would improve my writing/speaking style by not using this horrible word, it might help if you try explaining why. I never realized until your comment that it was considered a non-cromulent word. 
Seriously, please feel free to comment on my writing, but make it constructive criticism at least. My writing skills are and always have been sub-par and I do endeavor to improve them. If you had added a note about why I should not use irregardless, it would have been a more worthwhile post.
Jim
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
If you are suggesting I would improve my writing/speaking style by not using this horrible word, it might help if you try explaining why. I never realized until your comment that it was considered a non-cromulent word.
Seriously, please feel free to comment on my writing, but make it constructive criticism at least. My writing skills are and always have been sub-par and I do endeavor to improve them. If you had added a note about why I should not use irregardless, it would have been a more worthwhile post.
Jim
[/QUOTE]
You make a good case, sir. I was just kidding you.
Without doing research on the people providing me information regarding global warming, how am I to know what the facts are? I tried watching that program on the Discovery Channel hosted by Brokaw, and when they started talking about the poor polar bears, I thought to myself, “they aren’t going to stick to the facts here, they are appealing to my emotions (unfortunately for them, I keep those tightly locked in the basement).” So I changed the channel.
After I read “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton, I started questioning what I had originally held as fact. I realize this is a fictional book, but it seems Crichton has done some research on the subject. Some of his points are already mentioned in this thread, like the inaccuracy of climate modeling, no definitive link between the changes in climate observed and their cause. There are many more, but I didn’t memorize the book.
To answer the OP, I am concerned about this, but do not have enough information to say it’s something we have a big effect on. As to “We should do everything we can to improve” is a great sentiment, but at what cost? Higher oil prices? Outlawing some of the manufacturing processes that are the biggest contributors? That will just move those manufacturing processes to other countries (outsourcing is already a sore point for us in the US). I guess I don’t have an answer and that puts me in the group of concerned, but not doing anything about it.
[QUOTE=Grossbottom]
Since fanatics who have luddite utopian plans and actually want the authority to implement them . . .
[/QUOTE]
Who in the world are you talking about?! That description doesn’t apply even to the Green Party!
[QUOTE=Yeeter]
After I read “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton, I started questioning what I had originally held as fact. I realize this is a fictional book, but it seems Crichton has done some research on the subject. Some of his points are already mentioned in this thread, like the inaccuracy of climate modeling, no definitive link between the changes in climate observed and their cause. There are many more, but I didn’t memorize the book.
[/QUOTE]
As a clarification, the Book “State of Fear” did not sway me to say Global Warming is not real. It made me question the facts that have been laid out for us. It seems the data can be manipulated to show either side of the story. Ideally, some scientist would come out with data showing exactly how much of the warming trend is anthropogenic, we get a plan in place to reduce that impact, and later we collect more data showing the great improvement we have made. With current data, and analysis we have not yet seen this correlation, so how can we say the proposed changes will effect the climate at all?
What I find interesting is this, up until relatively recently nobody believed that humanity could impact the world’s climate to any substantial degree. We now believe that the pollution from our industrial revolution is contributing to global warming. Fine… we poured a bunch of stuff into the atmosphere without thinking about it and unwittingly raised the temperature a degree or so. Why is it hard to believe that if we put our mind to it and INTENTIONALLY attempted to affect the global CO2 level that it would be so hard to reverse? I’m not talking about cutting emissions or anything like that and letting the biosphere gradually establish a lower threshold I’m talking massive industrial scale deliberate atmospheric engineering. I kinda think if the chips were down and we had to we could put together a comprehensive and targeted program and aggressively tackle and sequester the CO2/Water Vapor ect through any number of means. The Y2K comparison has been made… nobody was suggesting in the run up to Y2K that we abandon or decrease our computer technology and revert to paper file systems to make sure we avoid calamity, we spent a buttload of money and in a few years squared it away. Problem solved. I’m just not that concerned about it.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Who in the world are you talking about?! That description doesn’t apply even to the Green Party!
[/QUOTE]
Still waiting for an answer, Grossbottom.