# I don't know that I agree with this one.



## mu38&Bg# (Jun 7, 2011)

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0sCCJFkEbE[/ame]


----------



## ChooChooMike (Jun 8, 2011)

Pretty funny !!

Got to remember though, that electricity has to come from somewhere, mostly like burning fossil fuels, so there's always a cost.


----------



## Maryak (Jun 9, 2011)

Placard at the Leigh Creek Coal Mine in South Australia

"Ban mining and let the bastards freeze to death in the dark."

Australia's electricity is generated mostly by fossil fuels with a small amount of hydro wind and solar, (including my 1.5 kW ;D).

Our goverment refuses to consider nuclear even though it's the only alternative viable base load technology currently available and starting from now would take at least 10 years to implement, assuming unlimited funding and no anti nuclear protests.

Of course we are happy to sell our uranium and coal and iron ore but to use it ourselves, that's really asking too much.

So plate your roof with solar and don't plant trees for shade,
You'll get a big fat rebate,
In fact you've got it made.

I wonder who will pay me?
When all the coal is gone,
No mining tax, 
No trees to axe,
But CO2 lives on.


----------



## bentprop (Jun 9, 2011)

It's quite ironic that the current volcanic outburst in Chile makes all electric cars(and other so-called planet saving measures) completely useless.The gases generated by these type of natural phenomena far outweigh any damage to the ozone layer done by man.
But of course,that's an unpopular view.It takes away politicians ability to manipulate people to their own benefit.


----------



## Ken I (Jun 9, 2011)

The problem with Hydrogen and electrically powered cars is the power still has to come from somewhere - the usual supects - coal, oil, gas still accounting for 90% - so where the heck is the CO2 saving.

Driving an electrically powered car does allow you to turn your eco piousness halo up to high beam (like half of the idiots in Hollywood - clueless as to the physics).

We need "Smug" reduction laws for these people.

This is the Oregon petition :-

"We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. 
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth".

This was signed by over 14000 scientists at the time of Kyoto - it now stands at 31478 - of which some 9029 are PhD's and 3803 PhD's in climatology, atmospheric or earth sciences. The Oregon petition is not the only one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heidelberg_Appeal

Over 100 scientists including Nobel Laureates as well as current & former IPCC scientists wrote an open letter to President Obama pointing out that his stance on global warming was simply not true.

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3133

The main petitions are: The Oregon Petition (31,000 accredited scientists), The Heidelberg Appeal (4000 signatures including 62 Nobel prizewinners), The Manhattan Declaration (600 research climatologists), The Petition to the United Nations (100 geoscientists), Petition to the Canadian Prime Minister (60 climate experts), The Leipzig Declaration (100 geoscientists), The Statement from Atmospheric Scientists (50), Petition to the German Chancellor (200 German scientists), Statement from the American Physical Society (150 physical scientists), Petition to President Obama (100 leading climate researchers), UN Climate Scientists speak out on Global Warming (700, many previously involved with the IPCC). All are critical of the notion of man-made global warming, and all of them (with signatures and accreditations) are accessible via Google.

If you want to save the earth - first take a science course.

There is no proof of man made global warming - none whatsover - based on the laws of physics.

The "overwhelming evidence" is without exception based on computer modeling which in turn is based on faulty correllations.

Example: the correlation between temperature and CO2 has the "inconvenient truth" of an 800 year time lag between temperatures and CO2 increaces - so if you use this otherwise significant correlation in your model you clearly believe in time travel in that you must believe if you add CO2 to the atmosphere today you will make it hotter yesterday.

Pull the other leg its got bells on.

Sorry about the rant.

Ken


----------



## mu38&Bg# (Jun 9, 2011)

I think they could have done a better job with the fake exhaust smoke locations on some of those. The IC powered cellphone is cool, but I think it needs a better muffler.

Marketing that play on simple minds and those that are unfamiliar with the topic really is an awful thing. Unfortunately, so few know anything about the topic that most think they just learned somethign by watching a commercial.


----------



## 90LX_Notch (Jun 9, 2011)

Hmm... Seems as though the planet warmed after each ice age. Damn, those caveman and their CO2 emissions!


----------



## Ken I (Jun 9, 2011)




----------



## crab (Jun 9, 2011)

"FOLLOW THE MONEY" People are getting rich spouting this crap (Al Gore).


----------



## kcmillin (Jun 9, 2011)

They got it all wrong. Nissan should be making those incredibly awesome gas engine powered devices, they might make more money, and thats what it is all about anyway. 

  Lets face it, these companies could give a damn about the environment, and if making "Green" cars is profitable, than they will do it. The electric car is just about as old as the gas powered car, and can anyone say "Stanly Steamer" These ideas are not new, but until recently, it was not economically viable. There is a real benefit to an electric car, and that it costs less per mile in electricity, but that may all change if everyone wants an electric car. The infrastructure currently in place cannot handle everyone on the block plugging in there car to a 220v or 440v service, and that 'cheap' electricity will no longer be.

 When it comes to Nuclear Power, these Eco-Terrorists automatically think Nuclear Bomb, when they should be praising it's positive environmental impact.  A Nuclear power plant is far from a bomb, and if there were less restrictions on where they can be built, the advancements in safety would be much further along, after all, practice makes perfect. And if one day we master Cold Fusion, the world energy supply could be near endless. But until then, Nuclear is the "Greenest" option we have. 

Now I need to do some senseless driving to cancel out the Greenies efforts. :big: 

Kel


----------



## milotrain (Jun 9, 2011)

To play devil's advocate:

Sure the power has to come from somewhere but having centralized power generation and grid distribution is much much more efficient and can easily be changed to more efficient systems as they are developed. The video is a good comparison, if you have to generate power with an ICE at each point of load then you have major inefficiencies in each micro system. In general it's better to have one power supplying system that can be upgraded so that the efficiency trickles down.

Also we know that there is not a one size fits all solution, if there were then we would all be building the same model engines because one would be way better (obviously subjective) than all the others. Because this is not true we can scale that observation to larger engine and power systems. We need wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, and fossil. We can't make enough power with any single system and every homogeneous organic system in history has died because of it's specialization.

Hybrid cars don't effect the environment in a positive much (if they do at all, many engineers debate that). But they are a good test bed for new technology that could trickle down into the real offenders like transport ships. The difficulty currently is that fossil fuels are still cheaper than anything else, and while most of these engines are used for work the cost will be the bottom line.

Anyone who says anything from a position of "fact" or certain inarguable truth you can bet is lying to you (even me, right now) because as engineers and scientists we know for sure only one thing. And that is that we don't KNOW anything. We have a lot of theories, a lot of great evidence to support some of the more accepted theories, but there is no uncontaminated FACT.


Mind you I love nuclear but there is one huge angry monkey in that room. Where do we store the byproduct? Because in the US right now we don't have a place. All of the byproduct that is highly deadly for a very long time is stored in TEMPORARY containment tanks on the site of the reactors because no one is willing to move the stuff and no one is willing to take it. So we do have to figure out where to put that angry monkey.


----------



## BillC (Jun 9, 2011)

All of this is logically true: ....fuel shortage, too much CO2 from fossil fuels, we're burning our food for fuel and dictating what is 'healthy' and 'green' for all - 'the common good'. And it is all serious, and also very alarming but the simple fact of the matter is that the planet cannot sustain the number of people (horrific plague) that are now alive and sucking on everything. This will be the largest 'correction' on the planet in history (as if we know all human history) and it will not be very far in the future. The way the greed in our government is panning out, the fate of the US has already been determined, our money is spent and we have no means to support ourselves any longer with energy, food or any sort of manufacturing or self sufficiency. Oh, but we give billions in gifts to the Chinese for humanitarian reasons? Will they jump right in and help us out....? 

Takes me 10 minutes to get home from work but if an auto accident occurs on a surrounding interstate highway the gridlock turns 10 minutes into two hours. There are too many automobiles on the friggin highways. There are no obvious answers but nature will take her course.... soon.

Gloom and doom? No; the truth, and I'm smiling while typing this because I know that there is nothing that can be done about it and being sad will not fix it. I like chocolate ice cream on hot apple pie with lots of whipped cream - unhealthy? Hell no, and I'll share. Don't repent and duck; smile and stand up. We didn't do this to the planet....


----------



## Ken I (Jun 10, 2011)

I just wish I could see the degree of realism and rational comment like those of the members of HMEM on other sites. This cheers me no end.

Like Milotrain I like nuclear but the gorrilla in the room is the 650000 spent fuel rods in the US alone - kept in little better than swimming pools - that are leathally raioactive even after 10 years "cooling off" - fatal dose in 15 minutes exposure at 1m radius from a single spent fuel rod.

The anti-nuclear lobby is correct in that this is going to be problematic for thousands of generations to come.

However - instead of looking for "Geologically Safe" containment we should insted be dumping this stuff (after vitrification) in an active subduction zone like the Marianas trench - it will pose no danger of leakage or recovery by terrorists - where it will be promptly covered in sediment and slowly be dragged back into the Earth's mantle.

Otherwise nuclear is still the safest form of energy producion on a "Deaths per Terrawatt Hour" basis. (considering all deaths including mining, extraction, processing, maintenance etc) only Hydro is safer - and that only if you exclude the 175000 Chinese killed in the Banqiao dam burst.

Admittedly Wind & Solar are close and influenced by even a single death due to lower base and shorter history. 

Regards,
      Ken


----------



## Kermit (Jun 10, 2011)

Spend a little time with google and you can find out that there are Nuclear reactor types that can USE the spent fuel rods currently being stored as WASTE!

The reactor technology is available to render such spent fuel into low level, short term(100-300 year) toxic waste, that does not need special storage facilities. Other reactor types(thorium etc.) can also be used and they are even more friendly, in regards to the waste products.

Sadly, our media moguls seem only to happy to fan the flames of panic by promoting this nuclear fear in the world. They use misleading and inflammatory language that does not convey the true danger levels presented by situation such as the recent japanese plant meltdowns. Bananas are radioactive, and so are Brazil nuts. Workers in coal mines are exposed to levels of radiation that would cause a nuclear plant to be evacuated. Ever been in a county court house with pink granite walls? Guess what? You were being irradiated with large amounts of hard radiation, and if you wore one of those dosimeters that nuclear workers are required to wear, you would have been sent home to prevent the exposure. ???

Eating fourteen bananas will give you a bigger dose of radiation than most people were exposed too in Japan recently...it really is obscene the way things are twisted and mis-represented by our media outlets.


----------



## Ken I (Jun 10, 2011)

Right on Kermit - as a registered radiation woorker - I'll get a bigger dose from a day spent at the local seaside granite rocks than are permissible for a year's exposure at the reactor.

The flames of fear are fanned out of all proportion to the real risks.

Having said that I would not like to be downwind of Fukashima at the moment.

Ken


----------



## BillC (Jun 10, 2011)

When there is talk about more offshore drilling - Boom, a platform goes up in smoke and crude oil is smeared all over the place. When there is talk about nuclear power as the alternative to fossil fuels - ******, a tsunami devastates a progressively nuclear powered industrial country and the cooling systems in a couple of their reactors fail overheating and destroying radioactive containment vessels allowing leakage of radioactivity.... Ironic?

Then the media goes wild...."do away with oil wells, they're unsafe!"; "Nuclear power will kill us all!" - "hey Rachael, your ratings are slipping - do something and stop talking out of the side of your face." It's all about ratings and selling Viagra and vacation trips. Any sensible thought or rational idea is too mundane for the media anymore and this problem has bled over onto the public who are led around like gerbils with no basic common sense to make a decision. Biggest problem is, no-one cares and if you do, you're an extremist troublemaker.

Nuclear power is the best alternative energy at this point in time. Split the atom to make heat to make steam to make an engine go chug, chug, chug to turn a generator to make electricity to flow through wires where almost half of it is lost - but it allows all who wish to be in the grid buying Viagra and taking vacations.

Iran is installing missile silos in Brazil....Does the media report on that? Why was 'the President' in Brazil last month - on vacation?


----------



## Maryak (Jun 10, 2011)

Don't forget,

It's all the fault of volcanoes. If they hadn't burst through the ice mantle which covered the earth some 750 x 106 years ago we would not have had global warming on a scale which makes our current so called warm spell disappear under the radar. This in turn allowed some ice to melt and thus water to absorb the suns heat, (rather than ice to reflect it) and then those pesky single cell bacteria eventually became pesky politicians and some even had the misfortune to become media moguls and spin doctors.


----------



## BillC (Jun 10, 2011)

And,

The moon is a major factor too. The gravitational pull on the earth causing a constant rippling pull on everything and don't take too lightly the 28 day cycle - there have been wars fought due to the 28 day cycle... And the effect of the full moon? Why it's a wonder we even exist!


----------



## Ken I (Jun 11, 2011)

Maryak  said:
			
		

> then those pesky single cell bacteria eventually became pesky politicians and some even had the misfortune to become media moguls and spin doctors.


 :big: :big:

One of them even ran for president, won an Oscar and a Nobel prize for a largely fictional scare story and now sells carbon credits to those he frightened, the clueless & the gullible.


----------



## BillC (Jun 11, 2011)

Ken I  said:
			
		

> :big: :big:
> 
> One of them even ran for president, won an Oscar and a Nobel prize for a largely fictional scare story and now sells carbon credits to those he frightened, the clueless & the gullible.



The clueless and the gullible - you mean the ones for 'hope and change'?


----------



## milotrain (Jun 14, 2011)

It's easy to sling stones at people who we disagree with and who are politicians. Their's is not an easy job, and many of them are good people trying to do good while satisfying the constituencies desires. I don't think there is anyone who doesn't hope for change, nor do I think the push towards more sustainable systems of power generation is bad. Organic farming is fought with problems but it's a step in the right direction. Ideally you'd eat stuff you grew in your backyard but most of us don't have that kind of time.

Everything is a balance, no one has a monopoly on the truth (weather convenient or inconvenient).

full disclosure: I worked on Capitol Hill briefly, as did my sister. Many of the people I encountered were hard working people who were trying to make things better and that rarely translated to those who got good press for it (democrat, republican, independent or green).


----------



## Rickard (Jun 14, 2011)

Please Allow me to apologize in advance for being a boorish - uncivilized - Crass and Rude American (Texan). you'll get my BIG BLOCK 502 CID V8 and 2 stroke Kawasaki right after you "pry the GUN from MY COLD DEAD HAND"! Electric cars and the tech involved is KOOL as anything, but you ain't gong to force me to switch. Global Warming, and OZONE is all Part of a communist plot to remove our freedom. all this Global Warming is brought to you by the same People that brought you Metric! I'm 100 times more "Eco Friendly" by using my 50 - 100 year old SEA Tools and my 45 year old truck, than buying all new "Metric" stuff. ( requiring a ton of energy to manufacture)


----------



## Maryak (Jun 14, 2011)

milotrain  said:
			
		

> Everything is a balance, no one has a monopoly on the truth (weather convenient or inconvenient).



I wish it was.

One of my problems is that human history is littered with the carcasses of the majority of scientific opinion is X and it has been the nay saying minority of Y who have pulled humanities chestnuts out of the fire. 

IMHO climate change has been hijacked. Currently there is no rational debate and hence no rational action. A somewhat self serving grab for additional tax dollars by some countries whilst others continue to destroy forests and remove the planets lungs.

If it is a problem, it's a GLOBAL problem; and successful resolution is only possible on a global basis. This probably one of the more inconvenient truths.

Best Regards
Bob


----------



## Ken I (Jun 14, 2011)

The world is facing hundreds of problems CO2 is just simply not one of them.

No one has a monopoly on the truth and I would be the first to admit I could be wrong on this one
 but....

Have you ever seen a warmist admit they might be wrong ?

All conjecture is presented as fact.

Ken


----------



## milotrain (Jun 14, 2011)

I believe that global warming is indeed happening. I am quiet possibly wrong.

I do not believe that global warming is happening because I'm driving a 30+ year old car. I do not believe that if I buy a prius I will fix global warming. I do believe that if we all worked towards being more conscious to avoid "industrialized solutions" (agriculture, food, toys, throw away technology) that we would be doing a good thing for the environment. I don't think that will necessarily "fix" global warming, in fact I am not sure that fix is the right word. The planet goes through swings, we may be aggravating those swings to our own detriment, we may or may not be able to do anything positive.

I recall a story:

Little boy is walking through the woods when he comes across a small pond where he finds a pretty but dead fish. Little boy is sad and reaches in to pick up the fish and bury it. He notices upon touching the water that it is very cold and comes to the common sense conclusion that the fish died of being cold. So he goes home and boils up a kettle of water, runs out to the pond and dumps it in. Of course he finds that the water in the pond isn't perceptibly warmer. So he spends the next month designing a slow pumping system with a boiler unit over a fire he builds next to the pond (sound like anyone we know?) and slowly heats up the pond to a nice warm comfortable level. This kills all the fish.

We have no clue what we are doing, and the media shills for whoever pays them. Scientists may be impartial but not all of them are good at what they do, and certainly not all of them are right. Many people disagree on what is happening, if what is happening is "bad", and if we can do anything about it. But this is the same as the constant human problem of not killing each other all the time. None of us know how to fix it, but we can just be nicer, we can try harder to be understanding, clear and cordial (which we do a great job of on this board but it's not an honest reflection of life unfortunately). So that's all I can think of doing with the environment. Just be nicer, do it better, in whatever way that seems to resonate with you and maybe we'll come out the other side.


----------



## Ken I (Jun 15, 2011)

Milotrain, like you I accept the world is warming - (although currently cooling) - and if geological history is anything to go by it may get appreciably warmer - we are after all merely in a warm interglacial of the Neocene icehouse.

I just don't believe man has anything to do with it and we have no possible mechanisms to do anything about it.

CO2 is not the magical "Global Thermostat" it is claimed to be (well maybe 0.2°C if we go back to the stone age).

The problem with the AGW belief system is that by opposing it I am obviously anti-environment etc. etc.

I'm not - I live here.

But I know shoddy science when I see it.

With the Naural (organic) Carbon cycle accounting for 196 billion tonnes - man's input of 8 Billion tons - while significant is unlikely to be earth shattering.
Recent sub-sea surveys now place volcanic CO2 at 5-50 times mans figures - the error of the estimate is almost an order of magnitude larger than man's contribution. Mt. Pinatubo put more CO2 into the air in one year than man has since the Industrial Revolution.
To then claim we know enough to be suggesting current policies is simply bad science.

I used to be a "believer" but once I started down the science I rapidly became skeptical - I have spent hundreds of hours on this subject and my own personal notes on this now tops 150 pages.

Man has a lot to answer for and we all need to play a part - but I'm not buying into the CO2 hoax any longer.

As Lord Keynes once famously said "When the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, sir ?"

I changed mine.

Ken


----------



## milotrain (Jun 15, 2011)

Perhaps i should clarify. I don't believe I have near enough data to apply blame to a single or group of man's actions as effecting a specific nature of the natural environment. However I do absolutely believe that man's actions have damaged the natural environment of this planet. Our damage may not be that big of a deal, I mean in the grand scheme of things if we die off the planet will just keep going in whatever way the natural system develops regardless of whatever we did. It's like overpopulation of goats on the Galapagos. It's a problem, goats never existed there until sailors put them there and they are destroying what was there before, but that doesn't mean that the destruction isn't natural. It is natural, it's a function of the system of nature including man's effects. Nothing inherently wrong with that. But if we want to preserve something (which we do because as humans we are universally afraid of change) then we have to be conscious of our actions as accelerating change or retarding change. In total honesty I think that whatever we do accelerates change (law of entropy), some change is just more obvious.

For example, the 8 billion tons of CO2 we accelerated into the natural system (we didn't create it, the atoms were always there, we just moved it) is the less obvious change. The more obvious change is the massive deforestation of the planet which makes the planet less able to deal with CO2. Again, I'm not saying CO2 = global warming, or that CO2 = bad, I'm just saying that in a microcosm we accelerated a natural system. I happen to like forests, but I also happen to like furniture, paper, food, and the other things we get from cutting down trees. I'm not naive enough to think that we can have it all, but it should be worth our time to preserve some of the more beautiful things that are less touched by man. We need the reference, and we need the wildness of those systems.

I grew up next to a forest that doesn't exist anymore. Now it's housing. This small system had a negligible effect on the global scale but it made me sad. However now there are around 10 houses in that area making 10 families feel a sense of home in a beautiful part of the world. For this reason I'm perfectly aware that my feeling of "maintaining nature" is a personal, and even perhaps selfish satisfaction. But this is why I think we have to address "global natural destruction at the hands of man" in a personal and not global way. We can't calculate the global effects, we can't even predict the damn weather. So we just do the best we can and try not to be selfish.

If that means you want to drive a Prius I can't fault you for that, I can say that it would seem to some engineers that dirt to dirt a Prius isn't any better for the environment (and might be worse) than a similar small car. But I can't calculate the general push to more efficient systems that will make tomorrow better, nor can I calculate the general push towards selling something that people think they should want but doesn't actually do anything good. I can only say that I'll drive my cars into the ground and try to keep them as efficient as possible in the process, because I think that's better for the environment.


----------



## Maryak (Jun 16, 2011)

Australia's proposed carbon tax has been mooted at $26/tonne with the stated aim of reducing our CO2 emissions by 20%.

The latest info I have been able to find is that CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 365ppm to 383ppm over the 10 years 1998-2008. That's 1.8ppm per year.

Man is reported as emitting 29,321,302,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in 2008 of which Australia emits 437,045,000 or 1.49%.

The revenue raised by our proposed carbon tax assuming no exemptions is most likely around $11,363,170,000 in its' 1st year.

Assuming it achieves the aim of a 20% reduction in Australia's emissions we will have reduced mans output of CO2 by 87,409,000 tonnes or 0.3%. Put another way we will have reduced the increase in CO2 emissions by 0.0054ppm in a year.

Australia has a population of some 21,000,000 so every man, woman and child will have to find an extra $541 in the 1st year

IMHO the effects on our economy will be devastating as energy companies and businesses either recover the impost or close down and move elsewhere. The only people in the food chain who do not have the above options are the Australian Taxpayers.

Worse of all it's done virtually nothing for the environment.

Looking at the above...............it's SCARY..................I can't say:

Best Regards
Bob

I can only say        :'( :'( :'(


----------



## mu38&Bg# (Jun 16, 2011)

Here are more on the same theme.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKg-LPOXIMs[/ame]


[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ez8vWcjUhQ[/ame]

I've thought about building something even less practical than the gasoline powered blenders out there using a model airplane engine.


----------



## Ken I (Jun 16, 2011)

Taurus excreta cerebrum vincit !


----------



## steamer (Jun 16, 2011)

Ken I  said:
			
		

> Taurus excreta cerebrum vincit !




 Rof} Rof} Rof}


----------



## Maryak (Jun 16, 2011)

Ken I  said:
			
		

> Taurus excreta cerebrum vincit !



And will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. ;D

Bob


----------



## Dan Rowe (Jun 16, 2011)

Te audire no possum. Musa sapientum fixa est in aure. *beer*

Dan


----------



## tel (Jun 16, 2011)

I wish I had one in mine! ;D


----------



## steamer (Jun 16, 2011)

ehhhh?  What's that you say? ;D


----------



## Ken I (Jun 17, 2011)

Dan, another latin phrase I'll have to remember for future use.


----------

