Global warming

Nah if it aint New Orleans it aint worth it. Theres nothing like 3 disasters in a decade to make people feel happy and take notice. Only this time I would like to see even more of the place destroyed, to save the world?

You'll never convince him so why bother?!

 

We were doing just fine before the oil barons figured out that they could get the global warming legislation to stop simply by lying to everybody.

 

These are responses, not forcings. These effects are likely to effect the degree of warming that occurs as the result of some other forcing, but cannot, in and of themselves, cause a change in the climate.

As for the methane in the bottom of the sea, turns out that bacteria tend to eat that up before it reaches the surface, so it isn't a significant concern. Even if you thought it was, the total amount of extra methane in the atmosphere at present makes for a greenhouse effect about one fourth that due to the extra CO2.

Say what? What are you going on about?

 

I'm not sure what Harry's readme is but if it's anything to do with the so called "climategate" then it has no baring on the accuracy of the data above.

Here's another chart showing many other independant studies resulting in the same conclusion:

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

 

I have. You need to understand the science.

 

Man, I'm so over this argument. Energy diversity is so obviously the right thing today regardless of what we think the climate is going to do that it's a become a moot point. Let's just get on with finding and transitioning to them.

 

Isn't that kinda the point? Since we only have the one Earth, even if there's only a small chance that AGW is real and caused by humans, shouldn't we err on the side of caution?

There are no second chances.

 

Not at the cost of more government intervention and regulation and guaranteed worse standards of living for everyone anyways. Rising oil prices will achieve the same goal without the need of doing anything.

 

It certainly doesn't become religion or marketing. Politics, yes, because politics is about how we decide, as a society, what direction to move into the future. But that's not a bad thing or a good thing. It just is.

 

Company uses genetically altered bacteria to make diesel fuel:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110227/ap_on_bi_ge/us_growing_fuel

This (and algae, etc.) is the way we should use solar energy, not with useless and expensive panels that directly convert it to electricity. Living organisms are more efficient.

I fully support any technology that produces sustainable clean energy at close to or lower than today's prices. Cheap abundant energy is the only way for humanity to progress. Maybe then we'll see the return of supersonic passenger jets and space travel.

 

I'd love to see some calculations on how much energy they can get out per m^2 per year.

 

a month late

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1513511&postcount=468

 

Photovoltaic cells is mostly a niche product, they're quite resource intensive to manufacture and don't deliver very high output.

However, there are other forms of solar electric energy production that are much more efficient, including stuff like stirling engines and steam turbines.

Algae is an ideal means of vehicle fuel production, and we should absolutely invest as much as needed to get this going. It's as close to free energy as we're likely to get.

Abundance is not the same as progress. It can easily be the opposite.

Supersonic jets aren't really neccessary. They're just extremely wasteful in energy use, while not really bringing much benefit back to the world. So you can fly transatlantic in two hours instead of five and consume 10x the fuel per passenger of the slower aircraft, whoop de fucking doo, start your trip earlier.

We already have green rocket tech, so to speak, that's not the problem. You can't get more sustainable and environmentally friendly than burning liquid hydrogen/oxygen.

However, to really get space travel off the ground we need to get over our somewhat irrational fear of everything nuclear. Nuclear-thermal rocket engines have enormous thrust and scale up much better than conventional chemical rockets. That'll be the only way to bring significant payloads into orbit. It would also be safer, you wouldn't need heat shields and airbrake through the atmosphere to get back down, you'd just fire the main engines instead to slow down for re-entry instead.

So it's not politically correct, hauling nuclear reactors that weigh x tons up through the atmosphere, so what. It's the only really feasible way.

 

Are you sure subsonic flight is that much more efficient Grall? I mean it seems a significant quantity of energy is simply spent fighting 10ms^-2 accelleration towards the ground of a 100,000kg plane.