Comments on: Energy conservation is not a solution

By: Uncle B

Uncle B — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:28:20 +0000

If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times – solar/thermal-molten sodium – electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only – FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)

By: Deamiter

Deamiter — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:08:19 +0000

Don’t you think that many climate ’skeptics’ are just as politically motivated as your unidentified ‘alarmists’? I’ve always found industry-funded research (like Exxon’s funded research into Prince William Sound) to be much more convincing-sounding precisely because those ’scientists’ don’t bother to qualify conclusions and do a much better job of speaking to the general public — their primary audience.

On polar bears, have you honestly looked into WHY the population seems to have doubled or even tripled since the 50s and 60s? As a guy who claims to look at “both sides” I’d have expected you to have noticed that those early estimates were based solely on the reports of explorers, and the first scientific attempts to estimate the population (70s 80s?I forget) were between 20k and 40k.

And no, not all polar bears depend on polar ice to survive, but the majority of currently known populations depend on seals and other food they only catch on the ice. Sure, a few bears can survive without ice, but they’re increasingly invading human settlements for lack of food and the average weight of baby polar bears had been dropping in the past few decades — indicating that their mothers are having an increasingly hard time finding food.

By: rocketc

rocketc — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:17:01 +0000

All I am simply asking everyone on this thread to do is to question conventional and popular “wisdom”. I was once a great believer in Global Warming. I subscribed to Ranger Rick and National Geographic and read other environmentalist publications.

But then I also read what the other side had to say and found their arguments to carry more credibility.

By: rocketc

rocketc — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:11:55 +0000

I’m not saying that acid rain is not a problem. My point is that the scope of the problem is far less than the alarmists would have us believe. Furthermore, acid rain is a problem that is being solved.

Responsible environmental care is a good thing, but most of the current debate is motivated by a political agenda and a desire to control advanced civilizations.

By the way, polar bear estimates put the population at 20,000 to 25,000 – almost 2x the size of the population in the 1960’s. Furthermore, polar bears do not need ice in order to survive.

A great many scientists are upset about the IPCC’s and Kyoto’s misrepresentation of science. http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=522276&p=1

By: Deamiter

Deamiter — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:52:04 +0000

rocketc — it seems you utterly ignored the cited Swedish problems with acid rain? It’s been shown that when we put more sulfur and nitrogen in the atmosphere, rain includes increasing levels of sulfuric and nitric acids. The effect is not local as some suspect because sulfur dioxide and nitric oxides are relatively insoluble so they travel rather far before being absorbed and deposited in rain.

Over 18000 lakes in Sweden are now dead due to rising acidity from rain which pulls aluminum out of the soil. This pollution comes from England and is freely admitted by the British government based on scientific evidence.
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/yourenv/eff/1190084/pollution/acid_rain/

As for the Prince William Sound, it doesn’t look like an oil-slick any more, but it’s certainly not recovered (despite what Exxon’s press releases say). Chronic low-level pollution is still stunting the growth of many animals and is projected to significantly damage populations for at least another ten years.
http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/dec03/peters121803.html

There may be more trees in N America now (I don’t know where you got that) but entire habitats based on old growth forests have been destroyed — number of trees doesn’t replace types and age of trees!

Pretending that we somehow know the polar bear population is in no danger is silly. Certainly the Nunavut governments claim the polar bear population is rising (they profit largely from continued sport-hunting) but ignoring the fact that they depend on ice flows that are yearly becoming smaller or at least much thinner (this last year the area covered increased even if volume decreased) is just as bad as any alarmism.

The 2000-acre (not 40) footprint in ANWR only includes the area for drilling and airstrips. This utterly ignores the hundreds of miles of maintained roadway and pipeline as well as gravel mines and ice roads.

You cite updated predictions based on better models as evidence that the current models are wrong? I understand the apparent correlation (the projected change went down so they might project zero change later on) but such a claim has no logical basis. Would you rather they refuse to update their predictions when new models are developed?

This isn’t and shouldn’t be a polarized debate — it’s not “skeptics vs. alarmists.” We’re polluting the planet, and some of that could have a serious negative effect. Ignoring some scientists who models climate effects just because they got cited by the hated UN won’t give you a good idea of what we know and what we can know any more than learning about climate change solely from Gore’s populist video.