I see a common thread to some of your opinions. Will you please explain just what you mean by "the real problem" and just what you think should be done about "unchecked population growth"? I assure you I am not asking ready to pounce on your answer.
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12371587#post12371587 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by virginiadiver69
I see a common thread to some of your opinions. Will you please explain just what you mean by "the real problem" and just what you think should be done about "unchecked population growth"? I assure you I am not asking ready to pounce on your answer.
I don't have bias on nuclear power, I have an opinion. Basically it is too expensive, to dirty, takes too long to implement, has too many security issues and is not needed.
If you want or need to go out on the water or go flying you need a boat or a plane. Most people also don't do those things everyday. If you drive on the road everyday you don't need a 3 ton 4WD offroad vehicle. Most people I know with SUVs don't need the towing capacity or space of an SUV and even fewer have ever taken them offroad. If you need the features of an SUV regularly then fine, drive one. If you're a city driver though, there's no logical justification for driving one.
Please stop with the straw men. No one is asking anyone to make huge sacrifices in quality of life and go back to the 18th century way of life. Small measures that reduce waste and inefficiency are all that's being asked. Do you derive joy from having cell phone chargers and transformers plugged in when they aren't being used? Or from pumping the air you paid to heat or cool out into the neighborhood? Can you tell the difference between clothes that were washed in 120 degree water vs 100 degrees? Does having the thermostat at 74 rather than 72 ruin your day? Doing little painless things can make a very real difference. In my case, about a 33% reduction in energy use.
I've been using them in various fixtures for about 4 years now, including some that were on 8 hrs a day and haven't had one go bad yet.
All fluorescent lights contain mercury and CFs contain less than normal fluorescents. If they're disposed of properly none of it gets into the environment. If they aren't then the amount of mercury released, including the amount released to power the bulb for its entire life, is still much less than the amount it takes to power an incandescent for its lifetime. Who is using scare tactics?
I see this all the time in the popular media, but I think you'd be sorely disappointed if you actually read the primary literature, because these arguments aren't being made there.
Lets look at Mann's reconstruction. Was the data calibrated? Yes, known observational values were used to calibrate the reconstruction. The datasets used for the reconstruction were also calibrated themselves. Were there controls? For the proxy datasets, yes. For the original reconstruction, no, not in the experimental sense. It's a statistical analysis of data, not an experiment. Has it been independently reproduced? Multiple times.
That's true. It's also true that they're a type of logical fallacy. http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/logic.html
Eh, no. AGW predicts changes in precipitation patterns. That includes floods and strong storms as well as drought.
No. Local weather phenomena do not prove or disprove AGW. Local climate change doesn't either, but it can support it. A warming noted 15 years ago would put it on the timescale of climate rather than weather.
Small off-the-grid systems are viable for several days without wind or sun. I worked at a lab that got all of its energy from solar plus a single small turbine. There was a tropical storm over the area for 3 days, so no sun for the solar cells and winds too strong for the turbine to run. Still, by the end of the third day there was plenty of power to run a cafeteria, computer labs, aquaculture facility, and lodging for a few hundred people.
I don't think anyone here believes that conservation is a cure to the problem. It's a way to buy time until we have viable cures to the real problems. We can try to buy time to come up with real solutions before we get to a tipping point or we can just continue with business as usual and be completely unprepared for what's next.
No. Electricity production from fossil fuels releases mercury. When you add up the mercury content of the bulbs themselves and the amount of mercury released by the power to run the bulbs over their lifetime a CF bulb tossed in a landfill releases far less mercury to the environment than either an incandescent or standard fluorescent bulb.
