Of course then you should talk of specific Geo engineering methods, however I remember that for others they have problems with costs and applications.
The discussion and criticism of techno crap is OK IMHO, but not relevant to the thread.
It may well be the solar cells you got are a bad solution for where you live (90% of water heaters in Israel are solar powered).
The bigger point though is that the fossil fuel economy will always be cheaper than other alternatives (excepting, perhaps, nuclear). The fossil fuel economy is hyper-well established and ubiquitous. As a result no one wants to spend money to develop them to become effective alternatives.
That leads to the government stepping in to give them a leg up and defray costs so the tech can be developed to the point where it is competitive. As such you currently get expensive solar cells as compared to just sucking down more oil. That said the price of solar cells have been steadily dropping and their efficiency has been rising.
Kind of the point of these programs.
That would be swell if the government was a revenue generating charity dolling out money. Every dollar wasted means money not available elsewhere. Put another way, we are getting less power for the dollar. How are we going to feed electric cars on a grid that is barely meeting our needs now?
The government has underwritten all sorts of research/infrastructure for ages.
You can argue the money may be better spent elsewhere but that is not really here nor there.
Heck, the nuclear industry would not exist without the truly massive expenditure in the Manhattan Project ($22 billion in today’s dollars which I think means it still holds the record for the single most expensive project in human history…perhaps the Great Wall would cost more in today’s dollars…not sure).
Satellites wouldn’t exist without the government’s help in developing rockets and such. Private business just could not have afforded all the stuff needed to make it happen.
The list is long. Quibble with those decisions as you like.
Quoth Magiver:
That’s because reduction of carbon dioxide is a technology aimed at lowering atmospheric temperatures, and is by far the easiest and safest such method. In fact, it’s the only method that we know we can accomplish, and the only one we’re confident would work in the long term.
Is it my imagination, or does AGW skepticism seem more often than not to coincide with a philosophical objection to government spending and programs in general?
Absolutely, and in my personal, local experience (not on this board), it also coincides with a marked lack of knowledge about science AT ALL.
In fact, among the deniers I’ve spoken to In Real Life, I’ve been amazed and astounded at their complete and utter lack of knowledge of basic science. I mean they have no idea what the atmosphere is composed of. They do not know that CO2 is a molecule composed of 3 atoms. They think that you can bike to work on the carbon cycle.
All they know is that “it’s a hoax” and “them scientists are making money off this”, and “the government can’t tell me what to do”.
I understand your point but the money invested in solar technology for actual use doesn’t make it useful at night or on cloudy days so it’s money poorly spent. We need infrastructure now.
cite?
I find a similar lack of knowledge among the AGW faithful. You should try some other questions on your AGW faithful.
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Name three other greenhouse gases besides carbon dioxide?
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What Greenhouse gas is the highest percentage in the atmosphere?
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Should we attempt to eliminate all carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere?
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In terms of Gigawatts-hours of electricity production, what are the two biggest sources of electricity that don’t produce carbon dioxide?
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How much of the current earth temperature in degrees is caused by the greenhouse effect.
God I hate posts like this.
Do you know the answers to these questions? Will providing these answers to you do anything in the least to change your mind on the issue?
I don’t involve myself much in the climate change debate because there are much better educated/more articulate/less easily frustrated posters than myself. But I will, on occasion, read these kinds of threads to educate myself. And your post, like so many I see, are maddening to me. If you have an argument, just make it. If you have evidence to support your position, by all means provide it. If you have something relevant to add, please, help educate me. But these kinds of pointless posts that amount to nothing but “you do all the work answering my questions, but, in reality, it won’t change my mind and I won’t actually offer any evidence myself”. Luckily, the posters here are much more patient than I am.
I have two responses to this. One is that a number of independent temperature reconstructions besides HADCRUT and GISS have been developed recently, some by climate skeptics, using adjusted data, unadjusted data, the GHCN weather stations used by HADCRUT and GISS, and other sets of weather stations such as GSOD. They all show more or less the same thing. Even the reconstruction by JeffID of the Air Vent (the skeptic site through which the Climategate emails were released) is pretty close to HADCRUT and GISS. See here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/13/calculating-global-temperature/ (And for people who like to play politics or demonise the “opposition”, yes that is major skeptic Anthony Watts’ site, hosting a guest article that can’t have pleased him very much. Hat tip to him.)
My second response is from the awesome and highly recommended Science of Doom, a tremendous resource for anyone who wants to dig into the guts of climate science. It concerns the relative heat capacities of the oceans compared with the atmosphere.
**"For those who haven’t considered this relative difference in heat capacity before:
if the oceans cooled down by a tiny 0.1°, transferring their heat to the atmosphere, the atmosphere would heat up by 100°C (it wouldn’t happen like this but it gives an idea of the relative energy in both)
if the atmosphere transferred so much heat to the oceans that the air temperature went from an average of 15°C to a freezing -15°C, the oceans would heat up by a tiny, almost unnoticeable 0.03°C
So if we want to understand the energy in the climate system, if we want to understand whether the earth is warming up, we need to measure the energy in the oceans."**
Ocean temperatures are the real warming story. The atmosphere is a sideshow we just happen to live in.
No need to fear! Climate Crock of the week is here:
Yes, a couple of Joel points are to make the sorry “gotcha” observation that many that follow the issue are ignoring what is the main global warming gas out there, unfortunately it is thanks to the feedback that water vapor has with CO2 that is one of the reasons why scientists are concerned with the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
So there is no need to deal with the other questions until the poster comes with his bound to had been debunked for awhile “gotcha” points.
These are fine questions, however I was talking about the deniers having a complete lack of VERY BASIC scientific knowledge. It would be great if the deniers were able to answer these questions as well, but the ones I’ve spoken too don’t even know what carbon dioxide IS in the first place. I mean they have no clue. They don’t know what an atom is.
Here’s another example. A gentleman of my acquaintance is very active politically in a right of center party. He is a retired engineer, well educated and worked for an oil company. He mentioned to me that he did not see what the big deal with global warming was, since in the past, “dinosaurs roamed Alberta in tropical weather , and that’s where the oil came from”.
I mentioned that the oil in Alberta came from Devonian reefs, not dinosaurs, and he simply goggled at me. I went on to say that the reason Alberta was hot was that during the Devonian, it was near the equator, due to continental drift.
Blank stare.
Plate tectonics. Alberta moved from a position near the equator to it’s present position.
Blank look. I explained plate tectonics in some detail.
“That’s just a crazy thing that scientists made up to justify spending money on Global Warming.”
He is willfully ignorant of basic facts. How do you even discuss something like Climate Change with a person like this? Sadly, he has much influence with a major political party.
Time lines…
Why is that many right wingers always have a problem with timelines?! Or time itself?
(but many times I have to wonder if it is more than just a coincidence)
Solar is not meant to be a one-stop shop for all out energy needs and no one pretends it is. Some places solar works well and tech is being developed to store the energy overnight (and energy needs drop dramatically at night). Other places wind works well. Others tidal generation works well and other places geothermal works well. Combine that with some fossil fuel/nuclear power generation to meet demand spikes and you are set.
Granted fossil fuel is cheaper now than all the other stuff. The point is not entirely about price points though (although that is a main consideration). Global warming, weaning ourselves from Mid-East oil and such mitigate the extra cost.
Not to mention fossil fuels are finite. Depends what you look at but perhaps another 30-50 years of the stuff. I could well live to see that (I am 43).
Establishing the new tech in both efficiency and getting it built and achieving economies of scale will take decades. Given that when do you think we should start getting serious about it even if global warming is not a concern of yours?
Just so JoelUpchurch won’t be able to claim that we’re not arguing in good faith:
1: Any gas at all will have some greenhouse effect, but the strongest greenhouse gases, on a per-molecule basis, are methane, ammonia, and the various short-chain chlorofluorocarbons.
2: Given that, as mentioned, all gases have some greenhouse effect, the most abundant greenhouse gas by molecule count is nitrogen. Measured by the total amount of greenhouse effect they produce, though, the answer is water.
3: I would prefer to continue breathing, thank you very much. But we should try to reduce by as much as we can.
4: If we count energy spent in constructing the generation facilities, none of them. Not counting that, the #1 is hydroelectric, followed by nuclear fission at #2.
5: I don’t remember the exact value off the top of my head, but it’s in the vicinity of 20 Kelvins.
What do I win? Ooh, if I get to pick my prize, how about if you come back and explain the relevance of any of those questions?
Meanwhile, Magiver, if I give you a cite that reduction of carbon dioxide emissions is possible, known to work in the long term, and safe, will you give me a cite for some other climate-engineering technology that meets those criteria? And if you can’t give me a cite for some other such technology, will you admit that emissions reductions is the only one?
There are people who have read all 900 pages. There are people who wrote those 900 pages.
Whose opinion should I be listening to? The people who took the time to study the issue and learn the facts or the people who didn’t?
It’s not an any-stop shop for energy. Solar cells are a complete waste of money. Adding a storage system to it is more money down a rat hole. It’s money that could be put into a nuclear plant.
No, I asked you for a cite backing up your statement.