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Automotive News & Views Are automobiles a major cause of global warming?
6840 messages, Last post on Nov 25, 2009 at 2:33 PM
You are in the Automotive News & Views Forum. Your Hosts are steve_ & claires
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Replying to: alltorque (Oct 17, 2008 7:57 am) Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf. The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth. Better get Palin's pipeline to the Midwest going. So they can tap into those massive stores of Methane. Oh, I forgot no trespassing on the tundra. We know that the Arctic was tropical at one time. It may be headed in that direction again. It was never tropical feeling the 25 years I spent in the Arctic.
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Replying to: gagrice (Oct 17, 2008 8:47 am) At a base I was stationed 34-32 years ago, they had  least once a week flights to Iceland. I was never a taker, especially in the winter. It was sort of like: it is more than cold here and I want to spend hours and hours to go to a place much colder !!?? To listen to some folks now, it is the new Miami! 
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Replying to: rightmove (Oct 15, 2008 11:18 pm) Check your owner's manual - many manufacturers just say to wash your car occasionally and don't even mention wax. Paint is lots better than its ever been and wax - to quote an expert around here - is just for glamour. Mr_Shiftright, "Teflon Paint Sealants Revisited" #7, 10 Jul 2003 10:33 am |
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Replying to: larsb (Oct 17, 2008 8:35 am) I got both AC units going full blast and the Freezers standing open. Are we freezing up the Arctic yet? This and the other article about the seeping methane show how futile man's attempts to control the climate really are. Does anyone really think that we could all stop using fossil fuel and this phenomenon would reverse itself. We will either adapt to whatever comes along or die. Very simple. |
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Replying to: ruking1 (Oct 17, 2008 6:08 am) No, it was not my opinion but a response to the statement below. "Sadly many scientists have so little integrity they will twist the data to say whatever the person paying the bill wants." I find it interesting that you know what he means while ignoring the actual statement. The word 'many' means amounting to a large but indefinite number. He may have meant something different, but the above sentence is what showed up on the screen. "...as you see yourself as part of "that" group (a scientist) and felt he was broad brushing YOU. He was NOT (per se). " It is not a question of me seeing myself as that group. I am a scientist. It is a simple factual statement. And his statement was a broad brush against all scientists. It is a type of fallacious argument where a person attacks or generalizes about a group. Using that type of reasoning you could never take any medication because medications are formulated by scientists who are just doing the evil bidding of the drug companies. How many things have been developed by scientists over the last few hundred years? Better not use any; it is all a scam.  And as to the question of MTBE, the refinery industry wanted to use MTBE even though they knew it would leak out of fuel tanks and pollute local ground water. It was a bad decision. But it also illustrates why we need to do a better job of defining GW before we jump to solutions. |
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/10/18/drought.woes.ap/index.html This article was interesting in that it did not try to tie the dry spell to global warming. And that was a good thing because we do not know if there is a connection. It did make me think of how when weather is normal people do not think much about climate. As soon as you start seeing unusual weather events people begin to wonder why. One area where I see a lot of progress in is computers. We are starting to see some really powerful PCs and supercomputers. Given enough time scientists should be able to model our weather and climate well enough to make better predictions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_climate_model I decided to join the climateprediction.net (BOINC) using a spare computer. Only 552 hours, 57 minutes till we get an answer. 
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Oct 18, 2008 7:44 am) A computer is only a number cruncher. The results are only as good as the formulae that are put into, and that it works on. It is getting the formulae right that is the difficult part. You need to 1) identify all the variables that go into changing the climate and 2) how much each affects the climate ( and this can be complicated by that fact that each variable affects the other - sunlight, deforestation, population growth, GDP, CO2, methane, cloud cover, chemical reactions in the atmosphere, solar flares, ozone and magnetic field protection from cosmic rays, amongst others ...). How fast the computer runs is secondary. |
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Oct 17, 2008 6:17 pm) What made you think I douted the validity of your assertion that you are a scientist? Like I said: little touchy are you? Correction: WAY touchy! Funny as scientist in every field as part of scientific inquiry build on successes or add to the scrap heap of failed and successful hypothesis, either proven or not. So a thin skin can perhaps be a liability. So get over it, you are really whining to the choir. ..."Using that type of reasoning you could never take any medication because medications are formulated by scientists who are just doing the evil bidding of the drug companies. How many things have been developed by scientists over the last few hundred years? Better not use any; it is all a scam"... That certainly is your take, but it is certainly not mine, nor a logical conclusion of the reasoning presented. But keep in mind you all would be working for peanuts if it wasn't for the high cost of insurance to cover the exceptions; when those very same drugs are prescribed to the general population. Lethality in the medical field is absolutely rampant. But as you probably would agree, your response and my response to yours is off topic. More on topic: ..."And as to the question of MTBE, the refinery industry wanted to use MTBE even though they knew it would leak out of fuel tanks and pollute local ground water. It was a bad decision. But it also illustrates why we need to do a better job of defining GW before we jump to solutions. "... Indeed NOT !! To me this was a case of a product in search of a problem!!!!?? This is about as back wards as it gets! This clearly illustrates what Gagrice said is true! What magically changed in the calculations (after)? NOTHING! However what became apparent/revealed actually) (especially as you say if it was totally known beforehand) were the costs FAR (exponentially by the way) outweighed the so called benefits !!!!???? Indeed it was that way from the start! Indeed as I have said in the past, it took literally BILLIONS to legislate, BLIIONS to implement, billions to reconfigure, billions to test and REVEAL/find out (even as it was known all along) and billions to de-leverage. All WASTE !!!! To boot not only nothing was mitigate, but the products had to be cleaned up! Thats the good news! The bad news? Absolute travesty!! So was lack of integrity a portion of the equation? Absolutely! Let me ask another way, do you think they would have listened to an actor like Damon Wayans doing his drunk ghetto guy schticked, complete with his misuse of industry buzz words?
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Replying to: avalon02wh (Oct 17, 2008 6:17 pm) You are right. I clumped you all together as I would lawyers and politicians. That was not entirely fair. I do know scientists that studied everything from tundra grass, bears, bowhead whale migrations to ice core samples. And as a whole they were very serious about their field of study. I have no doubt they presented their superiors with accurate data to the best of their ability. The problem and I have discussed it with the scientists in the field is what happens to that data you sent to town? One marine biologist that was tracking whales told me she had little say in what actually happens with the data. This was in the early 1980s. She was making $25k per year with a PHD in Marine Biology. Her boss that did nothing but sit in San Diego submitting the grants and passing on the data made $85k per year. She could have gone to work at Sea World for triple what she got from the outfit she worked for. She loved studying whales in the Arctic. That said, when I bad mouth scientists it is aimed at the ones that are in the middle doing whatever they are told to do by the entity paying the bills. I know they are not above lying to preserve their jobs. So if you are one of the dedicated scientists out in the field or doing research without a preconditioned conclusion. I apologize and assume you are part of the majority of good scientists. My take on MTBE. Bad science used by greedy lobbyist, paying off corrupt politicians. |
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Replying to: ruking1 (Oct 18, 2008 8:35 am) Nope, If I was way touchy I WOULD WRITE WITH THE CAP LOCKS ON and use a lot of !!!!!!!!! This is only a blog after all. My point about the medications was an analogy. Other examples would be; if you did not trust airline pilots, would you want to fly or if you did not trust engineers, would you want to travel in an elevator or cross a bridge? The MTBE issue was a good example of how the Air Quality folks at EPA pushed a bit to hard on the oxygenates without understanding the water quality ramifications. Another example of that is solid waste folks wanting to incinerate trash when it was looking like we would run out of landfills. The next thing you know we have an air pollution issue because of mercury in the trash (old thermostats and thermometers with mercury in them). More on topic: Cooling climate ‘consensus’ of 1970s never was "The team’s survey of major journal papers published between 1965 and 1979 found that only seven articles predicted that global average temperature would continue to cool. During the same period, 44 journal papers indicated that the average temperature would rise and 20 were neutral or made no climate predictions." http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/37590/title/Cooling_climate_%E2%80%98- consensus%E2%80%99_of_1970s_never_was
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Automotive News & Views Are automobiles a major cause of global warming?
