Earth day

davidg wrote: Jamin.....As has been mentioned above, I don't agree with global warming, as I think it is a political weapon meant to give more political power, and money to progressives. But, I sure do appreciate and admire your passion and energy for your belief!! You are quite articulate, friendly, and not condescending in your presentation of data.

Hey Dave, always great to hear from you. JP and others have raised a similar issue. I don't disagree that climate change can be used for political purposes. It has and it will. But because something can be used to further an agenda doesn't mean that it was itself derived from an agenda. Climate change is a scientific question with a scientific answer, as I have tried to present above. Once the reality is recognized it is then up to society (i.e. political bodies) to determine what to do next. That is the real debate. If the climate is changing or not is not really a debate at all, it is just framed as such by those with a vested interest in the status quo. Scientifically speaking that is just the reality of it, no getting around it.

My own agenda in this thread is not to get you to come over to my political "side" (I am not even sure what that would be) but to recognize the scientific evidence which is utterly thorough. What I really want is people of all political stripes working together towards a solution (that of course means argument, but at least then we are moving forward) instead of denying the problem. Not only is there a place for conservatives to argue for conservative solutions to the problem, we desperately need it. But again, to beat a dead horse, the solution to the problem is not to deny it exists altogether. So far this has been the disappointing strategy of most of the political right.

davidg wrote: I have a very sincere question and am just trying to learn, but, why did the glaciers melt millions of years ago. Was there global warming, or climate change that far back, or did something else cause this to happen? I know for sure there were no cars or coal fired plants back then, but, I don't know why the glaciers melted.

This is a great question, and one that has no firm answer. To get a better idea you can read about ice ages and glacial cyles glacial cyles on Wikipedia. Both of these pages jive with what I understand separately and give a good explanation of the state of the science.

If you don't want to wade through it all the short answer is that it is not 100% clear. Over very long time scales (10s to 100s of millions of years) it seems that some combination mostly of tectonic movement (itself influencing wind and water current patterns), volcanic and solar activity, mixed with some occasional extraterrestrial agents (meteorites) causes these changes.

On shorter time scales (10s to 100s of thousands of years) glacial activity also waxes and wanes. The dominant theory that explains this shorter term variation is that it is caused by three interacting components of the Earth's orbit pattern; a non-circular orbit around the sun, the tilt of the Earth's axis, and the wobbling of the Earth on its axis. These change how much solar energy is absorbed by the planet, and coupled with other geological/biological processes causes glaciers to grow and shrink. This is usually referred to as Milankovitch cyles or orbital forcing.

So yes, the climate does change over very long time scales from our perspective. Most often these changes are quite slow and relatively regular. Current climate change as we know it is operating outside of these known agents, both in magnitude and rate. That is the concern.

I also want to make clear that I nor other credible people are saying is that the world is going to bake itself and us into an oblivion. We suggest that a changing climate is predicted to have very real economic costs, especially to the availability of food and water, among other very major but perhaps less tangible and direct costs. This is the reason that something needs to be done. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

JPASS wrote: So let me ask this question. The believers and skeptics are not going to change their minds as we have seen in this thread. So no point in continuing to beat that dead horse. So for those of you who believe in climate change, what are your solutions/ideas to fix it?

Expend huge sums of taxpayer money on infrastructure to ensure that we are able to bring carbon based fuels to market at an ever increasing rate to sell overseas for the "value added" profit realized by the companies refining it.
Seriously? No seriously?

Riley wrote: Man, you Progressives are so pessimistic. John, when you look around you, do you think the environment is cleaner or dirtier than when you were growing up? .

How do you think it got that way? By denying the problem? You think those companies stopped dumping things into the rivers and air out of the goodness of their hearts? An individual might do that, a corporation on the other hand has no heart and will only maximize profits.

Do you think anyone could get a clean air or water act passed today? If we had listened to the “conservatives” in 1948 or in 1972 would we have any rivers or lakes worth swimming in today?

Personally I am much less concerned about the fact that there is global warming than I am about us living in a world where people who should know better can deny it with a straight face and still be considered relevant.   Not only that but be able to repeat it often enough that reasonable people start to believe there is an actual debate about it. Rather than accepting the truth now and at least considering doing the easy stuff (some would consider that the actual conservative approach)- we kick the can down the road until there are no good choices left.

Things are so nuts these days you don’t have to worry about the entrenched interests fighting to maintain the status quo so much as you do them rolling back the things that have already been proven to work.       

It is amusing to me that the “conservatives” out there like to lament our give everyone a trophy society- but somehow want to think that every voice should have an equal weight in a debate on a complicated topic like climate science – once again people like the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought idea. If you ain’t a climate scientist you shouldn’t get to play one on tv, talk radio,… or on a correctcraft forum.   

Yes Joe, We should only listen to real scientists like Al Gore and "O".

Riley wrote: Now we're being told about global warming and you can pretty much tell a person's politics by which side they're on, even the scientists.

Yes, this is unfortunate, but says something about the power of politics and nothing about the credibility of science.

Riley wrote: I don't deny GW, but am skeptical of just how bad it is because the people delivering the message often seem to have an agenda, (present company excepted).

The present company is pretty good on this thread. I just wish my expertise lay in fixing boats. I'd be a lot more useful around here.

Bruce, I lived those regulations in the '70's and 80's, (well, was aware of them in the 70's, wasn't in the work force yet), and they were incredibly divisive and difficult to implement. I remember every business owner and manager loudly complaining that each and every regulation was going to put them out of business, the EPA was the enemy intent on ending U.S. industry, on and on. Those that embraced the changes ended up, for the most part, doing just fine, and as you said the air and water got cleaned up. Yes, the dirty rivers and smoggy air were there in front of everyone, but lobby's and business owners spent tons of money to try to stop the EPA.

I don't see this as all that different. As I said in an earlier post, our current path makes no sense to me, why have to argue this back and forth to realize that GW is with us, and our current energy policies make no long term sense. Are they linked? To what extent? I'm not sure, but I know that denial won't do us any good.

We could seize the opportunity to reduce our dependence on fossil fuel through conservation and more rapid introduction of renewable energy. We could also, and this will open a can of worms, remove some of the barriers to nuclear energy and build a new fleet of nuclear plants.

Instead, we're fracking the living *************** out of our country.

63 Skier wrote: We could also, and this will open a can of worms, remove some of the barriers to nuclear energy and build a new fleet of nuclear plants. Instead, we're fracking the living *************** out of our country.

I've gotten in some heated arguments with friends about this. It is a classic touchy point with the "greens." If people really care about the planet they will consider nuclear power a viable option. Even a very good one.

Hansel wrote: 63 Skier wrote: We could also, and this will open a can of worms, remove some of the barriers to nuclear energy and build a new fleet of nuclear plants. Instead, we're fracking the living *************** out of our country. I've gotten in some heated arguments with friends about this. It is a classic touchy point with the "greens." If people really care about the planet they will consider nuclear power a viable option. Even a very good one.

Jamin, it's amazing some of the people that are now on board with building new nuke plants, some that not too long ago were the most vocal opposition. It makes a lot of sense, and I know there's a few on the drawing board in Georgia, but wow are they expensive and difficult to put into operation.

Yet another area where very bright people are willing to change their view by listening to facts and coming to their own conclusions.

HIJACK ALERT!!!!!!

I have been fascinated with the nuclear industry for years and have a legacy in my back yard. CP2 and CP3 are abandoned in a forest preserve just outside Chicago. I found the site after several years of searching. It was not marked at the time, but has since had a monument installed to commemorate it. My son in law got his PHD in high energy particle physics at the University of Chicago and his office looked out on the original site of CP1, the original controlled nuclear reactor. I took him to see the site with my daughter and our dog. They moved it to in Red Gate Woods . We walk there frequently.

While driving back from Seattle in September I stumbled across a ghost town about 200 miles outside Jackson WY and Yellowstone Park that was once a uranium boom town operated by Western Nuclear. When the industry went bust the town closed down. It was a very fun place to visit. Here is a little video I think some may like.
Jeffrey City WY

Here is site A, CP2 and CP3

This is where they buried the remains

This is the monument at the University Of Chicago that stands where the first sustained nuclear reaction took place under the stadium as a result of The Manhatten Project.

Sorry, I get excited thinking about the history.

JPASS wrote: I also trust the opinions of my peers over complete strangers on a boat forum on the subject of ACC.

Complete strangers? I'm hurt ......

I think incentives as opposed to penalties and fines are great way to get companies and individuals to do their part to become more green.

I agree completely!

I think the technology behind the Chevy Volt is a great mid-step to ALL-electric vehicles, but still needs some time to grow and improve. My biggest problem with the car is the price and the fact that it's a GM.

I like the tech, considered buying one, I actually think the Volt doesn't get enough credit for being a practical electric vehicle. The fact it's a 4 seater makes it a no-go for me, I have to be able to put 5 people in the car.

JPASS wrote: Hansel, It doesn't matter how many times you keep repeating it, it doesn't make it true. Anthropomorphic climate change is NOT solid science because you say so. If it was so solid, there would be nothing to debate as all scientists would agree (and please don't give me the consensus argument as we disagree about that as well). The people I interact with, in my field of environmental sciences, don't have that kind of consensus on the subject. I'd say it's closer to 60/40. I also trust the opinions of my peers over complete strangers on a boat forum on the subject of ACC. While we don't always agree on theories or papers when we debate, we never sit there and say one person's interpretation of the data is dead wrong, while the other's is dead right. Especially when there is so much room for dissection and criticism of each.

I trust climate experts that I don't know more than the non-experts that I do.

I'm not exactly saying you are "dead wrong", only that your personal views are not congruent with the state of the science. Conversely, the climate science community may be wrong, but from the evidence available the likelihood of this is very slim.

Too many people, some of whom I know personally, have dedicated their lives to understanding climate science. In some sense I am speaking for them, and I'd rather offend you a little than undermine their life's work. Still, I hope I haven't offended you too much.

I'm sure you are a smart guy. You've got a great list of potential solutions, all of which I am in more or less in complete agreement with, so perhaps we are not so deadlocked as we seem. We've probably both said everything that needs to be said between us on the topic though, and the more I think about things the more I suspect that our differences are far fewer than what we can agree on.

I hope we get a chance to meet at some point. Once I thought I'd never get along with davidg, but now all I've got for him are warm fuzzies.

Cheers,

Jamin

63 Skier wrote: John, I'm very interested in the history of nuclear tech too. I've read a lot about the making of the 1st bombs, read Paul Tibbets book about the missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also about the Hanford site in Washington that is incredibly contaminated now. I wish when I was spending time in Chicago I'd visited those sites you show in the pics.

I had a physicist who worked at Hanford at my house last October with my brother for their 50th high school reunion. He still has clearance for the Hanford site and told me to visit next time I'm out that way. We capped off the visit with a hike to the CP2/CP3 site. I have had several requests for tours.
Site A plot M

63 Skier wrote: I really don't know why this has to be so much about "left are idiots" and "right are morons". What if the discussion is just about two opposing opinions?

I thought the rights were idiots and the left were morons????? Why didn't I get the memo?

63 Skier wrote: Bruce, I lived those regulations in the '70's and 80's, (well, was aware of them in the 70's, wasn't in the work force yet), and they were incredibly divisive and difficult to implement. I remember every business owner and manager loudly complaining that each and every regulation was going to put them out of business, the EPA was the enemy intent on ending U.S. industry, on and on. Those that embraced the changes ended up, for the most part, doing just fine, and as you said the air and water got cleaned up.

Dave, How many embraced the changes by closing there doors or moving over seas? In the 60,s we built cars here and shipped them around the world. by the late 70's we were building cars around the world to sell them here. We still mostly assemble parts here that were built around the world to sell cars here, but our automotive companies still build cars overseas for overseas customers. When we raise environmental standards, and accept or encourage countries like china not doing the same, we are making the decision to send jobs off shore. I like that we have cleaned the smut out of our air, but we paid a price for sometimes mandating expensive technologies before they were cost effective. Real companies closed, left, or never started up due to the additional costs of doing business here. We now have the lowest work force participation rates we have seen in over thirty years, we now have just 58.6 percent of our population is working. Industry may adapt to all the new regulations "for the most part", I just hope yours and my jobs are not in the part that cannot.

Dave, you are conflating the science of climate change with the "marketing" of it.

That said, I don't care much for Al Gore. I was much less convinced of climate change when his movie can out, and when I saw it at that time I only made it about 20 mins in before I had to turn off what I took to be sanctimonious drivel that was merely preaching to the crowd. I wonder what I might think today... Maybe I would love it, I cannot say. Either way, I consider him and others like him a liability for many of the reasons you cite.

Climate gate is a cooked up scandal whose villains were mostly exonerated by at least one, and perhaps two, independent investigations after the fact. I believe they were admonished for some of their language and practices, but their scientific conclusions were not found to be in doubt. This has scarcely been reported, bit in any case the damage was already done. Based on the timing of the hack and its release it seems obvious to me that it was a purposeful attempt to undermine the Copenhagen Accord that was occurring at the time.

Yes, the science has been in flux since the 1970s but has advanced greatly and has arrived at the consensus that we are all too well aware of. The rebranding was done in an attempt to help people get on board since "change" is in fact more accurate, albeit confusing, than "warming." However this was perhaps a net loss to climate change awareness since it undermines confidence by introducing unnecessary, if overly honest and scientifically justified, uncertainty.

China and India get out the same way we did from Kyoto; by being too big and important to be told otherwise. Their argument is that we had our fossil fuel heyday and they should be allowed to as well. In some sense that is "fair", but environmentally speaking it is completely misguided.

Other than Evolution, climate change is certainly the most politicized scientific issue of our day. The science itself is minimally political considering people are still doing it (as in the collection and publication of the primary scientific literature) and I will admit that things start to grow increasingly political from there. But this is what you would expect from an issue that is so huge that it touches every living person, and potentially so costly as to threaten the foundations of our society as we know it. The stakes are very high, I would expect anything like that to be less than intensely political. Of course that something is political doesn't make it inherently invalid, only contentious. I think you'd agree that deficit reduction by cutting spending is hugely contentious politically but that doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't work.

Nice chatting with you Dave. I hope you are enjoying this "heat wave" we are experiencing, I certainly am. I might be in the Twin Cities at the end of the month. Maybe we can meet up.

Good Night,

Jamin