I wouln't be too concerned about the exhaust vapour - I'd be far more concerned about the extra power needed to generate the H2 in the first place, this will have to come from electricitywhich needs coal, gas or nuclear power to generate before splitting water into H2 and O2.
Now every time energy is converted to another form there is a really big wasteage so H2 energy is in fact far from green just cos it spits out water vapour.
Exactly? How could i know it was on fire, before you had told me?
Bad words, they only become 'bad' when your taught it.
You had to be TOLD, there was a problem with GW, your trying to claim its this MASSIVE problem, well if so, why couldn't you guys figure it out, without being told!?
BlueFlame, the fact that you don't know something doesn't mean that it's not a fact. And it may not be an evident problem yet but that's like saying that going at 200km/h towards a concrete wall isn't a problem because you haven't hit the wall yet: once you do, then you will have a problem.
BMW's plan with the hydrogen cars was to turn a large chunk of the Sahara desert into a hydrogen producing plant running on solar power.
I've been wondering the same thing since beginning to read the report. Maybe there's something in there on it. If I find it, I'll let you know.
Al's right about the energy input needed and the pollution that comes from that. I'm all for nuclear power. I can't believe we were so stupid here in the US as to run from it years ago because of an accident or two.
What Al said goes for electric cars too. There was a comedian joking about this once. It went something like: "Electric cars. Yeah, that'll solve the problem, because electricity comes from magic! On the other side of that wall outlet is a magic jellybean field!"
Cracked me up and it's an excellent point. Same would go for H2 as Al said. It would be interesting to find out what the actual tradeoffs would be. Maybe there's something in the report on that too.
The 50/60 times number was something I calculated from what was quoted in the report. I'll have to look it up again and see. Shotglass pointed out that there might be a problem with the polar data, but the report's CO2 rate showed an error percentage that supposedly should have included that. I'm not entirely sure. We'll have to look.
Thats exactly my point? Whether you are facing a wall at 200km/h or not, until you have hit it there is no problem otherwise thinking the way your stating, there will be a problem at what ever speed, in what ever direction
So if you know you're headed for that wall, really fast, and you can do something about preventing the crash, won't you try to prevent the crash?
EDIT: A fun quote from someone reading this thread:
[14:18] Gary: *imagines somebody repeatdly walking into walls*
[14:19] Gary: *thud*ow ... *thud* ouch!.... thud *ouch*!
Clearly, I've finally met my intellectual equal. Touche.
If you'll confirm your age I can give a more age appropriate response. In the mean time, since it appears you're about 10-11 years old, I'll post this in more familiar school work form:
1) How would I know that the sun was 93,000,000 miles from Earth without being told?
2) If nobody told me that the sun was 93,000,000 miles from Earth, would it still be 93,000,000 miles from Earth?
3) Why should I believe an astronomer who tells me that that sun is 93,000,000 miles from Earth?
Your response should look like this:
1) (Some answer)
2) (Some answer)
3) (Some answer)
Let's see if you can manage that one. My hopes are not high, my :littleang
Of course i would, that would be me Avoiding the problem, the problem being the end result.
Todd -
1. You would never know
2. Yea it would still be the same distance
3. There is no reason to believe anyone about anything, if people believed Scientists about Science, that would mean you would believe in God too, as a religious expert tells you to do so?
That would be priest or monk, they have been probably trained to be professionals with religion and as it is with Information Technology you need some training and then few certificates and very little experience if at all and you can be an expert, probably same with religion?
On point 3, my answer would be no. The religious expert can not provide evidence of the existence of God. The scientist (in this case, the astronomer), can provide ample evidence that the Sun is 93,000,000 miles from Earth. Evidence. They can measure it. Just like they can measure CO2. Go figure.
This is what you originally said that started this whole line of comedy:
Again, what you're saying here is that I had to be told before I knew what was happening. That's absolutely true. Same goes for the distance to the sun, or better yet, that the Earth revolves around the sun. I didn't know that the Earth revolved around the sun until somebody told me it did.
Here's your quote again:
The second part is "that means its not happening."
You said that because I had to be told that something was happening, that means it's not happening. Does that make any sense to you? Seriously, do you see a problem with that or not? If not, I'm really worried about you.
If your statement is true, this would mean that the Earth is *not* going around the sun *because* somebody told me it was. Do you understand? This is why many people are laughing at you right now. This all has been going completely over your head.
Here's another interesting thing you said earlier:
Are you beginning to learn anything here? See any patterns, ironies, or the like, emerging?
I'm not making argument here for pro or anti GW feeling, but I did want to address this one. I find myself with deep suspicion, frankly, about who is set to gain from the whole GW thing.
The vast majority of research into the effects of GW is being done with governmental grants, and the scientific world is no more made up of wholly honourable and philanthropic individuals than any other aspect of society. I cannot say with any certainty that, in order to rise to the top of your scientific game, you have to be beyond reproach any more than if you were a politician at the top of your political game.. and we know how impervious they are to financial influence, don't we? You just have to be surrounded by the right-thinking cronies. At the bottom of society, the equivalent phrase would be the age-old "honour among thieves". Money is, arguably, the root of all evil. Research into global warming is definitely very popular, since the grants began to become available, and it doesn't seem like two minutes since it was the work solely of poorly funded college research students. I sense opportunism. Everyone has to make their way in life, after all. Oscar Wilde said that money is NOT the root of all evil. LACK of money is.
So why would governments, giving grants, be interested in furthering the pre-supposed "myth" of global warming? It's simple, really: Revenue. The opportunity for new revenue from new tangibles is endless. The term "carbon footprint" is specifically defined to make an intangible thing tangible. And it's very effective. As you know, New Zealand farmers are already being taxed for their cows' carbon footprint. Now that's a forward-thinking government, if ever I saw one.
So which governments are interested in global warming? Well, we know that the governments in Europe, whose favourite pastime is taxing its people, are very interested in global warming. And the ones who aren't? Well, the US does stand out as one which has little interest in the theory, and it's also a government with little desire to federally tax its people.
I'm just pushing the boat out there, since you said that you couldn't think of anyone.. and since it's been staring me in the face for a while, I felt the need to let it out.
I'm not postulating that the whole thing is a scam. I'm just handing over my observations.. draw your own conclusions, or introduce your own suspicions into the mix
Very important to bear in mind, when looking at the "hocky stick".
I'd just like to say thanks, Todd for your last post: that certainly raised the maturity standard of the argument against BlueFlame in this thread. Looking back, I've been out of line with being rude and I'd like to apologise to BlueFlame and the rest of the readers for that. That doesn't mean that I concede that nothing should be done about global warming though: I still firmly support Todd in saying that we are heading towards a brick wall and we should do something about it before it becomes a serious problem.
I may be an old cynic but as soon as politicians see a chance for a definite vote-puller, they back it. After all why wouldn't they?
I agree with Sam's summary on this.
Techies, environmentalists and activists all see the signs; after all, we all generally share the same belief that killing our environment is not a good thing.
If the politicians start backing this, then funds are made available for 'further studies', and a little micro-business starts to cluster around the debate, feeding off the funds. it becomes a self-perpetuating industry in its own right and little can be said against it for fear of raising social and conscience backlashes.
To me, such issues are similar to the orgainc food farce where middle classes are happy to pay signifiacntly over the odds for allegedly superior organic produce in an attempt to appease their own consumer consciences. This is clever marketing - more so than nutritional benefit, they specifically go after the consumers they know will buy into this kind of propaganda. The similarities with a lot of the GW debates are obvious.
I'm not saying we should be complacent about global warming, I just feel very cynical about the info fed to us, and particularly preached about by politicians and activists when they only make sure they give you one biased side of the picture.
This, imho, applies especially to the arguments about CO2 levels contributing to global warming, as I have stated in the New Scientist reports earlier, this does not seem to be a scientifically significant contributor and is used as an extremely emotive topic rather than being based on any proper reason or investigation.
at the same time water vapour will form clouds which much like ice reflect a whole bunch of heat back into space
honestly i doubt anyone has fully thought this through yet
is think youll find that with an educated guess on how much gasses can move around on the timescale before freezing solid and filtering the current rise with a rect of appropriate size you will still see a suspiciously steep rise
the big idea here is that size matters and that electric motors are (as you being into rc will probably know) extremely efficient (90+%)
so however much you improve an internal combustion engine you will never burn oil as efficient as a power plant can
and even factoring in all the losses from charging driving etc the electric vehicle will still fare significantly better (not to mention the prospect of free energy from fusion some time in the future)
no because sciencs by definition is empirical and thus can be proved or disproved ... god by its (im inclined to say her) very definition cant http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/science.jpg
ive said it countless times before but apparently nobodys listening
there is no money in science for the scientist
research money is put into the research not into the scientist ... ie into toys to play with like the earth sim not into the scientists salary which is usually fixed and quite a bit lower than what he could earn out in the industry
the only thing he has to gain from all this is a reputation in the science world which he would loose quicker than britney can loose her underwear if he was conciously spouting bs theories
Hydrogen/electric cars are all about centralizing power generation/pollution really. Instead of having a relatively inefficient petrol engine in every car, you have a few seriously big and efficient power plants and use some other energy carrier to transfer the generated energy to individual cars. It's much easier to implement pollution removal and efficiency boosts on the large level than it is doing the same thing in each and every car. CO2 removal for instance is possible to do on on a very large scale in gas-based power plants, but is not possible due to size/cost inside a car.
There are problems of course. One being the efficiency of hydrogen/electricity as energy carriers. I think hydrogen has relatively low energy per volume compared to petrol (requiring more energy to transport), and transferring electricity over the grid is also a very lossy process. Batteries lose a lot of energy over time too, and they're not too good for the environment either.
The good thing with hydrogen/electricity based cars is that you can "easily" switch to other energy sources at the generator level without replacing the entire fuel infrastructure like we have to today. Nuclear, hydroelectric, wind, wave, sun, gas, oil, coal are all completely usable as fuel once we get to that point, and I think that is the biggest benefit. Once we're all running electric/hydrogen cars and they get fusion working, we're laughing. (It's just 20 years away like it's always been! )
You don't need to apologize to me, i can handle a bit of rough, i can take it when others don't agree with me, when others can't.
Hindsight, Todd, that wasn't what i intended to mean when i wrote that, which is pretty evident now. My point exactly is that, GW doesn't exist, if your not told that it is, Nobody can possibly agree it exists, if they don't know how/why and other reasons. More than 1/2 of the world, probobly don't know what GW is and obviously neither do I, so the NON GW crew, will always have 1 up, as strangely, the un-educated people are smarter than the Panic Mongers, even though, they don't have an opinion on the matter!
I think an analogy is in order: say you're driving on an unknown piece of road, at 140km/h. There's a slight turn in the road but a road sign tells you that straight after that there's a sharp hairpin and a concrete wall on the far side. You can't see for yourself yet because you can't see around the slight turn. You didn't know that there was a turn there until you saw the sign. Is the sign a government plot to make you drive slower or should you brake?
Well the signs here in England are a joke they have signs like :
When there is no Corners or Cliffs to be seen. So i suppose i would be 50/50 to if i were to believe the sign, but most of the signs are a good benchmark of where other idiots have gone off so, i would read into the sign and give action accordingly
A job is a job, and research grants pay for researchers' salaries. Nothing drives a person like the offer of a steady income. And FTR they are in industry. Global warming research is a "hotbed" of industry.
I do not discard the cynicism that I apply to religion when I turn to science. Both are "industries" planning for the future of mankind, making predictions, threats and promises. Science is an alternative authority figure to traditional religions, but its success in the modern day merely means that it attracts the "faithful" by singing a different song. They're the same people, but disillusioned with religion and religious piety, they believe the scientific pitch, that science is above reproach.
I'm just not ready to go "on faith" with what the scientists say yet. They've been wrong before. A lot. Heck, most religions started out as sciences. They offered rationalised explanations for things that couldn't be explained, and they gained followers that way. Science today is not necessarily different.. and a lot of the theory which is being sold as fact right now will ultimately become forgotten. It will have to be, since much of it is in direct conflict with other theories.. but all of it is proffered by qualified scientists, asserting that their research is valid.
Right. So wouldn't it be best to not take our chances with global warming either? It IS happening and it seems very likely that we are a HUGE influence. Driving hard at the stone wall that might turn out to be a sheet of cardboard painted as a stone wall seems like a massive gamble: after all, the implications of global warming are severe.
You're not supposed to take anything on faith in science. Science is the exact opposite to faith. If you don't agree with some scientific conclusion, look through the source data and make your own conclusions, perhaps even write your own paper highlighting any errors you find. That's how this stuff it supposed to work.
Sam, my impression is that most anti-GW suggestions try to undermine the validity of the data presented by the pro-GW papers rather than dispute the theory behind it and such. Yet one things they cannot dispute are:
a) Humans have an impact though (how much so is unknown)
b) Global warming is happening
c) Global warming is accelerating
Basically, what the anti-GW guys are saying is that this might not be a cause for concern because we don't know what's happened in the past even though the best guess we have goes to show that humans are having a very significant impact. So it's like one of those cartoons: you're heading for a concrete wall. Did the coyote paint a sheet of paper in a tricky plot or is it a real concrete wall? Two ways to find out: run into it really fast and see what happens or slow down and examine the wall from close. This might be more time consuming but are we in any hurry? Should we really tempt fate and risk the demise of the human species just to get wherever the human race is going a few decades sooner or should we approach cautiously?
.