Führer Trump

[Oberon]

Sure. Climate change is objectively true but the presented solutions are cash grabs. The carbon footprint of solar panels and whole home batteries are much larger than burning fossil fuels to generate energy but its presented as a 'green solution.' Moronic ideas like "Using recycled metal studs instead of wood" to build a house are pushed in my industry although, once again, the carbon footprint is higher by a factor of around 10.
Here we can see the Republicrats pushing against the Democrans on green energy issues with the Democrans grabbing the moral high ground while pushing lucrative nonsensical policy and the Republicrats arguing good sense to justify filling their pocket book while trashing the environment. Either way the planet looses.

Don't particularly care about the political aspects of climate change, but are you aware that carbon emissions and the rate at which temperate is increasing have both been going down for the past 20 years in post-industrialized countries?
carbon emissions are down 20% in the US, if I'm not mistaken.

[Helz]

Don't particularly care about the political aspects of climate change, but are you aware that carbon emissions and the rate at which temperate is increasing have both been going down for the past 20 years in post-industrialized countries?
carbon emissions are down 20% in the US, if I'm not mistaken.

What you are touching on is "Milankovitch cycles" and yes. I am aware. This does represent cyclical change in temperature but does not invalidate global warming. It relates to the way the world moves around the sun and rotates in context to changes in Eccentricity, Axial Precession, and changes in Obliquity over around 100000, 25000 and 40000 year periods respectively.

On the most basic level what we know about climate change comes from examination of ice cores. Within very old ice there is very old air bubbles. Those air bubbles can be examined to understand simple things like amounts of greenhouse gases and oxygen levels which can be used to extrapolate things like temperature. In a very basic way global temperature has been extremely strongly correlated with greenhouse gases. I say correlation instead of causation on the same margin you should consider the 'Theory of Gravity' a 'Theory.'
Basically over the last 300 years Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide numbers have doubled and are higher than they have ever been found throughout history by our understanding of testing ice cores.

There is also the theoretical connection between the magnetosphere and ice ages but thats a can of worms better not touched on although I think there is something to it.

In addition the introduction of Chlorofluorocarbons has eliminated massive amounts of ozone (with 1 molecule of Chlorofluorocarbons eliminating around 10,000 ozone molecules.) There is also significant impact of the elimination of rain forests to make room for cattle farming. This translates to less plants that convert Carbon Dioxide into oxygen with more mammals who convert oxygen into Carbon Dioxide while producing substantial amounts of Methane.

The part most people do not understand is that these temperature changes are gradual because the ocean is big and acts as a thermal dampener. So if right now we were able to stop any increase in greenhouse gasses, stop chlorofluorocarbons influence on ozone, and stop the reduction of plants global temperature would still rise for around 45 years.

I am not sure where you got the reduction in carbon emissions figure but I feel like even if thats true its probably just exported industry. America loves to pretend to be 'green' by 'recycling plastics' even when that just translates to shipping our plastics to a third world country who then throws it in the ocean, burns it or buries it. America loves to stick up their nose at China citing how much more pollution China makes but in ratio to citizens China is over twice as efficient as America and America is literally the worst in the world.

I kinda think of global warming like the national debt. Either political party cares about one but pretends the other does not matter and figures their kids will pay for it but both are totally a significant issue.

[Oberon]

What you are touching on is "Milankovitch cycles" and yes. I am aware. This does represent cyclical change in temperature but does not invalidate global warming. It relates to the way the world moves around the sun and rotates in context to changes in Eccentricity, Axial Precession, and changes in Obliquity over around 100000, 25000 and 40000 year periods respectively.

On the most basic level what we know about climate change comes from examination of ice cores. Within very old ice there is very old air bubbles. Those air bubbles can be examined to understand simple things like amounts of greenhouse gases and oxygen levels which can be used to extrapolate things like temperature. In a very basic way global temperature has been extremely strongly correlated with greenhouse gases. I say correlation instead of causation on the same margin you should consider the 'Theory of Gravity' a 'Theory.'
Basically over the last 300 years Carbon Dioxide, Methane and Nitrous Oxide numbers have doubled and are higher than they have ever been found throughout history by our understanding of testing ice cores.

There is also the theoretical connection between the magnetosphere and ice ages but thats a can of worms better not touched on although I think there is something to it.

In addition the introduction of Chlorofluorocarbons has eliminated massive amounts of ozone (with 1 molecule of Chlorofluorocarbons eliminating around 10,000 ozone molecules.) There is also significant impact of the elimination of rain forests to make room for cattle farming. This translates to less plants that convert Carbon Dioxide into oxygen with more mammals who convert oxygen into Carbon Dioxide while producing substantial amounts of Methane.

The part most people do not understand is that these temperature changes are gradual because the ocean is big and acts as a thermal dampener. So if right now we were able to stop any increase in greenhouse gasses, stop chlorofluorocarbons influence on ozone, and stop the reduction of plants global temperature would still rise for around 45 years.

I am not sure where you got the reduction in carbon emissions figure but I feel like even if thats true its probably just exported industry. America loves to pretend to be 'green' by 'recycling plastics' even when that just translates to shipping our plastics to a third world country who then throws it in the ocean, burns it or buries it. America loves to stick up their nose at China citing how much more pollution China makes but in ratio to citizens China is over twice as efficient as America and America is literally the worst in the world.

I kinda think of global warming like the national debt. Either political party cares about one but pretends the other does not matter and figures their kids will pay for it but both are totally a significant issue.

I wasn't claiming that global warming wasn't real; my point is more that it seems to be slowing down: I was reading a book on climate change the month before and one of the things discussed there was the temperature increase. IIRC, one report made by some relatively important committee (don't remember who it was and unfortunately i don't have access to the book right now), showed the temperature increase (by 2100) was lower than the one previously forecast several years back, and they stated that even with an increase as high as the previous estimate, the total cost of adapting to the new global temperature was around 4% in terms of global GDP. not a very serious threat for the coming century at all.

[Helz]

Don't particularly care about the political aspects of climate change, but are you aware that carbon emissions and the rate at which temperate is increasing have both been going down for the past 20 years in post-industrialized countries?
carbon emissions are down 20% in the US, if I'm not mistaken.

The reason that carbon emissions have been going down in post-industrialized countries is because of the transition to less polluting methods of energy generation. Source: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis...-14-since-2005

I would point out that post industrialized nations can only exist so long as industrialized nations do. They do not need the dirty machines and factory's required to produce capital goods or harvest the raw goods that make them up. Them reducing their personal carbon footprint in no way reflects a global reduction in the carbon footprint. I would equate it to 1st world nations 'recycling' by passing off their plastics to 3rd world nations because its cheaper than actually recycling; and pointing to less plastic in 'their' landfills as evidence that they are helping the environment.

[oops_ur_dead]

That was something my professor covered in my college course "Green building." A big part of his focus was helping students to understand that the majority of 'green' solutions pushed are not actually very green at all and to identify which solutions actually had a positive impact on the environment.
I am not sure where he got that figure but he hammered pretty hard on 'basic' solar energy and recycled metal studs. He did mention some new tower design that used mirrors to basically focus solar energy into a laser as being promising specifically because it cut out solar panels. I just spent some time poking around looking for the thing he covered but I couldn't find it.
He was also excited about wind energy that was attached to blimps which could change their altitude to catch the wind and tidal energy. Although because tidal energy used hydraulics it has a positive carbon footprint but a very very negative economic one. Anything hydraulic is very costly..

I get you, and I agree that green energy isn't a bandaid fix for overconsumption which is the vast majority of the issue leading to global warming. I remember reading an analysis somewhere that even if we go to full 100% green energy and everyone drives electric cars and shit we're still fucked because the amount of food and commodity production we need for our population is high enough alone to fuck us over.

But I still don't buy your statement that solar energy is more CO2 releasing than fossil fuels. I can't find a single source that backs that statement up. I do agree with the tidal energy though, from what I've seen it isn't feasible.

depends what you mean by less polluting methods. i do agree that the more efficient energy collection mechanisms played a (large) role in it, but probably not in the way you're saying.
coal itself has gotten much, much cleaner in the last ~50 years or so, to give you an example.
the transition to natural gas also helped considerably because natural gas does not pollute as much coal (even clean coal is 'dirtier' than natural gas)
theres also the idea that energy usage has become more efficient simply because technologies become more efficient as time passes by. you wont generate as much sulphur in a chemical plant today as you would've in 1960.

I mean you can actually read the article I linked and find out what I mean by less polluting methods. I'm not gonna summarize it for you, because you can read it and I think you glossed over some of the points yourself.

I'm wondering what your conclusion from pointing this out is meant to be.

[Helz]

I get you, and I agree that green energy isn't a bandaid fix for overconsumption which is the vast majority of the issue leading to global warming. I remember reading an analysis somewhere that even if we go to full 100% green energy and everyone drives electric cars and shit we're still fucked because the amount of food and commodity production we need for our population is high enough alone to fuck us over.

But I still don't buy your statement that solar energy is more CO2 releasing than fossil fuels. I can't find a single source that backs that statement up. I do agree with the tidal energy though, from what I've seen it isn't feasible.

The way he explained it was something like this:

Its not the energy production thats creating a carbon footprint. Its creating the capitol goods that produce and store the energy. Think about how much CO2 was produced to run heavy equipment to mine the raw materials, then to transport them and modify them into usable goods. Then how much more to produce the solar panels and battery's.

The reason they are not viable is their life-span. Even if you ignore factors of weather that can damage the panels they will last 30 years at the high end with depreciating energy gathering as that time goes on (even with maintenance.) Batteries are a much larger issue with a whole home battery system lasting 15 years on the high end. So 'if' you are in a perfect environment and buy on the high end of the market 'and' your the odd homeowner who actually preforms home maintenance you will go through 2 sets of batteries and a full set of solar panels every 30 years. Then all that goes to waste and you buy an entire new system.

So his argument was ^All that < The clean versions of fossil fuel energy generation.

If I come in touch with him again I will ask him where he got that info because I am now curious as to exactly how that was calculated within the scope I mentioned.

[DJarJar]

The way he explained it was something like this:

Its not the energy production thats creating a carbon footprint. Its creating the capitol goods that produce and store the energy. Think about how much CO2 was produced to run heavy equipment to mine the raw materials, then to transport them and modify them into usable goods. Then how much more to produce the solar panels and battery's.

The reason they are not viable is their life-span. Even if you ignore factors of weather that can damage the panels they will last 30 years at the high end with depreciating energy gathering as that time goes on (even with maintenance.) Batteries are a much larger issue with a whole home battery system lasting 15 years on the high end. So 'if' you are in a perfect environment and buy on the high end of the market 'and' your the odd homeowner who actually preforms home maintenance you will go through 2 sets of batteries and a full set of solar panels every 30 years. Then all that goes to waste and you buy an entire new system.

So his argument was ^All that < The clean versions of fossil fuel energy generation.

If I come in touch with him again I will ask him where he got that info because I am now curious as to exactly how that was calculated within the scope I mentioned.

All of that makes sense but we'd need some data to say if it's actually as bad or worse than comparable fossil fuel generation. Recycling has similar problems (the factories let off a ton of nasty chemicals and a lot of the materials just get dumped into the trash anyway due to impurities. Wouldn't it be better to have people stop using disposable plastic bottles rather than make them feel like it's okay because they can just throw it in a recycling bin?), but studies have still shown that the net effect is much less than if we did not recycle.

Plus, while home-use solar equipment just gets trashed now, if the business gets large enough then we can expect that the materials begin to be recycled and regulated, especially with the large solar farm companies that are starting to pop up all over.

[Helz]

All of that makes sense but we'd need some data to say if it's actually as bad or worse than comparable fossil fuel generation. Recycling has similar problems (the factories let off a ton of nasty chemicals and a lot of the materials just get dumped into the trash anyway due to impurities. Wouldn't it be better to have people stop using disposable plastic bottles rather than make them feel like it's okay because they can just throw it in a recycling bin?), but studies have still shown that the net effect is much less than if we did not recycle.

Plus, while home-use solar equipment just gets trashed now, if the business gets large enough then we can expect that the materials begin to be recycled and regulated, especially with the large solar farm companies that are starting to pop up all over.

This is a very good point. I also just realized that its not appropriate to compare municipality solar generation with that of residential at all simply because the energy grid does not store the energy it creates in 'batteries' as we think of them. They do crazy stuff like filling a lake on a mountain using the excess energy so that they can recover that energy through gravity when its needed.

Anyways, I will reach out to that professor at some point to try to get some real data on the solar bit.