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vincentML -> RE: Icelandic Volcano (4/21/2010 6:52:30 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
Doable in the best of all possible worlds I agree but in reality I wonder if it would not become just another commodity like oil to be exploited. I am thinking that even at this late date a great portion of the world's people are without clean water (Africa and Asia especially) and there is some controversy over the commercialization of even local water sources. The same is true for the scarcity of food and medical care and defenses against disease. With those problems on-going I wonder how we could be optimistic that wind/solar energy and electrical generators could be available world-wide. I suspect it will all come down to available capital like everything else and the impoverished and darkened world will become more impoverished and darkened. Nor can I imagine the current rate of production can be maintained in the industrial world. But on the bright side, necessity is the mother of invention, tis said, so who knows * shrugs *
Regarding the 250 years of massive release of CO2 that concerns you .... it occurs to me we are 12,000 years into an interglacial period. I wonder why the glaciers began to melt 12 millennia ago when there was no industrial emission. Do you suppose something else is at play in the great warming?
Actually the technology I'm talking about would be of great benefit to the developing world. Take vertical axis windmills suitable for mounting on roof toops. like this one:
http://www.urbangreenenergy.com/turbines.php?id=4
4Kw is a substantial portion of the power a US home consumes and would be sufficient for a multitude of power requirements in the developing world. if every commercial and industrial structure in the US had one or more of these on the roof along with solar panels where appropriate along with smaller quieter turbines on residential structures the US could drastically reduce our need to burn fossil fuels. Developing the industry to mass produce the turbines and panels would employ thousands or more of our neighbors.
As to the cycle of ice ages we may be in or just emerging from, we don't what caused them nor do we know whether another should be approaching or not. if a cooling cycle begins, and we'd have decades to see it coming, then burn some coal and cause some global warming but right now we have zero evidence for a return to the cold and we have overwhelming proof that the planet is warming. Our culture is absolutely dependent temperate climate agriculture. The warmer it gets the less land will be available for such agriculure and we simply won't be able to feed everyone as it gets warmer.
Ken, I will agree you have a point about the need to find alternate power sources that are efficacious if we are to believe the claim that future generations will have limited access to oil. I do not accept global warming and carbon "pollution" as a proper reason however. The wind turbine seems simple enough in its design and painting all the roofs white would help conserve energy. Of course there are energy costs in extracting the metal from its ore (lots of electricity needed there) and then the manufacture and transport of the devices plus the home generators and maybe efficient storage batteries. I see the device is tied into the municipal energy grid for times when there is insufficient wind. Of course, that's workable if your home is not a lean-to made of cardboard and other scraps of material and pitched on a sidewalk in Dhaka or Delhi. It is a middle class solution that needs more work, I think.
There are evidences of Ice Ages that have come and gone from 3000 million years ago. Between the Ice Ages there seem to be cycles of Glaciation and Interglaciation. You will find there is a lot of consensus (not really a scientific word) that the current interglaciation began about 12,000 years ago. To complicate matters there are cycles of warming and cooling within the Interglaciation. We have been warming since about 1850 during the current Interglacial. Before that, cooling began in 1315 with three years of rain at the onset of the Little Ice Age. See Kevin Fagan's book of that title (and he a believer in man caused warming) My point is the cooling was quite sudden - not the decades you envision. The Little Ice Age was preceded by a non-industrial warming when the Norsemen settled Greenland. Cycles within cycles. Nobody really knows cause and effect.
If a cooling cycle begins we will just burn some coal and create some global warming???? Tell me you were only kidding, huh, huh? Another point of interest, there was an expansion of agriculture during the Medieval Warming, not a contraction as you fear. Agriculture and migration followed the great warming that lead to the retreat of the ice sheets 12,000 years ago. The science is not settled. Poliicians should stop acting like know-it-alls.
Thanks for the debate [:)]
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