Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

[Loachman]

And an excessively-long time to refill the electricity tank.

 

[YZT580]

If you run out of gas with a conventional vehicle you can walk to the nearest gas station and fill a jerry can.  but what do you do if you run out of battery?  Extension cords don't seem practical and a boost would get you no where.  In all honesty, that would be my fear if I owned one:  getting stuck in traffic and watching my ammeter trickling slowly to zero while on my way home from work or on a planned trip that reached towards the battery range limits.

 

[c_canuk]

Many families cannot afford more than one car, and having one "short range" car and one "long range" car makes very little sense. Indeed, the most common version of two car families that I see have two vehicles for two different needs like one car and one van or one truck as the secondary vehicle. In this case the owners have the flexibility of being able to move between dealing with different situations without also having to factor in range, availability of charging infrastructure and so on.

Yeah, which is why I qualified it with MULTI car family. If you're already going to own 2 vehicles, I disagree, it would make a lot of sense to cut back on ~90% the cost of ownership of the vehicle you use for short range commuting exclusively... and even if you were a single car family, if you're in the city, an EV for daily driving, and renting a gas car for trips could also make a lot of sense due to that savings.

The vast majority of people buy vehicles to meet day to day needs, not to virtue signal. When EV's become practical either because they are energized by SOFC fuel cells or because the heavy work of upgrading the entire electrical grid has been done then people will choose their EV's based on their day to day needs. You can always stop and ask yourself why there are huge government subsidies for EV's, and as an experiment, track the sales of EV's over the next year as the US Federal tax subsidy for EV's end. You may be surprised at what you find.

It's not about virtue signalling. EVs are already cheaper and practical for most people, the electrical grid does not need upgrading since the time cars would be recharging is currently the lowest utilization. even the 100 KW packs wouldn't add more to the grid when charging at home over 8 hours, than running electric baseboard heaters.

(100 KW/8 hours = 12.5 KW or 5-6 baseboard heaters, that's assuming you completely killed the 300 mile range, which most people wouldn't be.)

Most houses have at least 100 Amp entry, and that's plenty. All that's going to happen is the base load plants will throttle up 10% ish at night. The grid can handle much more demand than that, especially since our overall consumption has been dropping for years.

This would be win-win for the Greenies... we'd put out less CO2, while keeping the electric producers viable. ON and MB electric producers are on the edge of viability at the moment due to expectations in vast demand increases that they built infrastructure for, that never materialized.

There are huge subsidies for Gas cars as well... has GMC and Chrysler paid back their loans after their collapse? Is the government still handing out grants to manufactures? yes? my my. What would happen to their sales if those subsidies were terminated?

Also, if you actually know what goes into an electric car you'd know that a 40K electric Focus vs a 19K gas Focus is a scam. Car companies don't want to sell electric cars because they aren't giant Rube Goldberg machines that need parts every year for the life of the vehicle. So they overcharge for something that costs the same or less than a gasoline car. A new engine and transmission costs more than a battery pack, and electric motors are dirt cheap. To be fair, I suppose they may be underpricing gas cars expecting to make it up on parts, however I find that unlikely.

Once Tesla Model 3s come out, and you're going to see a shakeup, because they will be direct competitors that outclass anything the other car manufactures offer at a price point that loss of subsidies won't change. Yeah, range/recharge time will be a problem but the cost of ownership will offset a lot of that for most people.

I commute 40 KM per day, and might put another 100 on per week outside of work. Not many EV's wouldn't work well for me. Even in ON, before counting maintenance, operating costs would be about 50 bucks a week cheaper. That's 200 a month in savings. That's before I count the oil changes, emissions controls parts, belts, fuel pumps, lines, tanks, filters, etc I'll be expected to replace over the life of the vehicle.

The one time a year I need a range more than 300 miles, I'd rent a car just like I use a hotel instead of owning an RV. Nothing wrong with RVs but the one trip a year doesn't justify the expense. If I were into RVing that would be different.

 

[c_canuk]

If you run out of gas with a conventional vehicle you can walk to the nearest gas station and fill a jerry can.  but what do you do if you run out of battery?  Extension cords don't seem practical and a boost would get you no where.  In all honesty, that would be my fear if I owned one:  getting stuck in traffic and watching my ammeter trickling slowly to zero while on my way home from work or on a planned trip that reached towards the battery range limits.

Running out of juice would be a bigger problem than running out of gas, sure, because you'd have to hire a tow truck. Though on the other hand, every morning when you jump into your car, it's got a full tank automatically. No realizing as you head to work, you need to fill up. Assuming you don't forget to plug in, which is something I am sure to forget myself at least once...

As for getting stuck in traffic and killing the battery that way, you don't use power of any serious amount sitting in traffic, because the motor doesn't idle. Yes the electronics will use a few amps, but you're sitting on enough battery that it's essentially nothing comparatively. A battery bank of 30KW has about 2500 Amp hours at 12 volts. Your electronics might draw 5-10 an hour, and if you're that low, you're probably not making it home anyway.

 

[George Wallace]

Alarmists not happy with ice growth.

https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/10/11/arctic-ice-1m-km2-added-in-10-days/

 

[Kirkhill]

Cnut's name gets bandied around a lot - usually as a dimwitted barbarian.

Interesting article here on who the actual barbarian might have been

But of interest to this thread is the included map of England in 878 (ie the Viking era - in which Cnut triumphed in 1016).

Much is made of "rising waters" and sinking England these days.  Shouldn't we just let the waters rise and let Mother Nature return us to the Status Quo Ante?

 

[ModlrMike]

15000 "scientists" you say...

http://blog.friendsofscience.org/2017/11/20/the-petition-of-more-than-15000-scientists-more-fakenews/

 

[NavyShooter]

Irony....?

 

[a_majoor]

The irony should burn even more when you consider that @ 70% of US energy generation is via coal fired thermal plants.......

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Just going to leave this here.

From CNN - “The Most Trusted Name in News” (Their motto, not my choice)

CNN)When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.
Carbon levels changed enough to cool the Earth by 1610, researchers found. Columbus arrived in 1492,
"CO2 and climate had been relatively stable until this point," said UCL Geography Professor Mark Maslin, one of the study's co-authors. "So, this is the first major change we see in the Earth's greenhouse gases."

More at link - https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-change-trnd/index.html

 

[mariomike]

From BBC

Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth's climate.

That's the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK.

Complete article here,
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973

etc...
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22mark+maslin%22+%22Great+Dying%22&tbas=0&source=lnt&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-7oDz-MzgAhUoWN8KHZNTA78QpwUIJQ&biw=1280&bih=641

 

[Kirkhill]

An environmentalist with whom I can agree:

The best way to save nature? Do nothing.
Peter Wohlleben argues no matter how much humans think they’re ruining the planet, the natural world will ultimately prevail

<snip>

Q: That fits with your theme: humans should look for patterns that we’ve missed or refused to see in the past, and then admit we can’t see everything. Humility and caution is what we need to practise.
A: Exactly. For example, when we talk about biodiversity and how we can support it, you would think we knew which species exist in an ecosystem, but we don’t. Look at the wonderful research done in New York’s Central Park, where scientists found more than 100,000 species. Most of them bacteria, yes, but very important parts of the ecosystem. We know only a few species on the planet, the bigger ones, but the small ones are often more important and of them we know just a few.

Q: This secret wisdom, then, is nothing esoteric. You mean we simply don’t know what we’re talking about?
A: That’s the essence of the book, and—not to give away the ending—right now the secrets remain secret. If you want to protect nature, the best thing to do is nothing.

<snip>

Q: Your bottom line then is: leave things alone, and nature will carry on.
A: Yes, we just have to keep our hands in our pockets.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/the-moral-catastrophe-of-justin-trudeau/

An incurable optimist.....

When commissioning a plant and training operators the hardest thing to do is to convince them to leave all those buttons alone and just watch the gauges.

 

[daftandbarmy]

This is pretty interesting. Haven't seen this theory before....


Multiple NASA Studies Confirm Bedrock Heat Flow Behind Melting Polar Ice, Not Global Warming

It is now abundantly clear that even respected mainstream NASA geologists and glaciologists are advocating that formerly underappreciated geological forces working in concert with atmospheric forces are responsible for polar ice cap melting. Here we note that in many cases these geological forces are dominant and, in some cases, the complete cause of modern-day and ancient polar ice cap melting

Knowing this brings into question other aspects of supposedly 100 percent settled climate dogma. Specifically, that man-made global warming is the root cause of other supposedly unnatural polar ice cap events such as alteration of marine and land animal migration patterns, anomalous plankton blooms, chemical alteration of adjacent ocean waters, alteration of polar area ocean currents, and changes in meteorological patterns. Many of these events are more likely the result of, or strongly influenced by, geologically induced heat and chemically charged heated fluid flow at the base of polar ice sheets or in adjacent oceans. Lastly, there is a quiet revolution occurring within NASA that will play out within the next year or two ending in the complete reconstruction of global warming theory.

https://climatechangedispatch.com/nasa-natural-causes-behind-polar-melt/?fbclid=IwAR0duTIVyvFZNDQffTLmyNyTKC0NOkW62gqjHpr2BOqC-IH_WqKpAp1SAWQ

All indications are that Earth is currently experiencing another period of strong volcanic activity which is acting to infuse CO2 into our atmosphere thereby challenging the validity of the global warming theory. Clearly, its time to put on hold all environmental action plans based on the cornerstone AGW principle of the global warming theory until additional geological CO2 emission research is conducted.

https://principia-scientific.org/discovery-of-massive-volcanic-co2-emissions-discredits-global-warming-theory/

 

[daftandbarmy]

On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare

On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem. I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as expert reviewer of its next assessment report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  - Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”

  - The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”

  - Climate change is not making natural disasters worse

  - Fires have declined 25 percent around the world since 2003

  - The amount of land we use for meat—humankind’s biggest use of land—has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska

  - The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California

  - Carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations and have been declining in Britain, Germany, and France since the mid-1970s

    -The Netherlands became rich, not poor while adapting to life below sea level

  - We produce 25 percent more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter

  - Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change



https://quillette.com/2020/06/30/on-behalf-of-environmentalists-i-apologize-for-the-climate-scare/

 

[CBH99]

Regardless of whatever primary causes there are behind our climate changing, I think we can all agree that we need to treat our planet substantially better.

Not cutting down rainforests, not filling our oceans with garbage and plastic, not filling our air with pollution and smog, etc etc - I think are all things we can unanimously get behind.



One thing listed in that article that stood among a few others...25% less fires now than 17 years ago?  Really?  rly:

 

[Brad Sallows]

Environmental degradation tends to follow a U-shaped curve as a society develops.  In the early stages, things get worse as people are more focused on heating their homes and cooking their food and having a job than worrying about air or water quality.  In later stages as (if) a society prospers, attention turns to pollution mitigation as other problems recede or are adequately managed.  The evidence is seen in all the problems that are overcome (recovered bodies of water once deemed irretrievably polluted, abatement of acid rain, reduction of ozone depletion, improvements in urban air quality, etc).

Prosperity and technological advancement are fundamental to environmental improvement.

 

[YZT580]

at last a spokesperson from the green side has revealed the flaws in the whole renewable philosophy.  But after 50 years of hearing that nuclear is bad, how are you going to convince people to switch away from those hideous aviary abattoirs?  We can take the first step by ordering nuclear powered subs to replace our current fleet, reverse the carbon tax to encourage our industry to stay in Canada rather than looking for cheap power elsewhere.  COVID19 has proven that that is a short-sighted concept, encourage the provinces to invest in mini-nuc. power plants.  But what politician is going to admit that they might have been wrong? 

 

[daftandbarmy]

One thing listed in that article that stood among a few others...25% less fires now than 17 years ago?  Really?  rly:

Yup.... apparently:

Global trends in wildfire and its impacts: perceptions versus realities in a changing world

Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses. However, important exceptions aside, the quantitative evidence available does not support these perceived overall trends. Instead, global area burned appears to have overall declined over past decades, and there is increasing evidence that there is less fire in the global landscape today than centuries ago. Regarding fire severity, limited data are available. For the western USA, they indicate little change overall, and also that area burned at high severity has overall declined compared to pre-European settlement. Direct fatalities from fire and economic losses also show no clear trends over the past three decades. Trends in indirect impacts, such as health problems from smoke or disruption to social functioning, remain insufficiently quantified to be examined. Global predictions for increased fire under a warming climate highlight the already urgent need for a more sustainable coexistence with fire. The data evaluation presented here aims to contribute to this by reducing misconceptions and facilitating a more informed understanding of the realities of global fire.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874420/

 

[Furniture]

Based on my experience, every summer is the hottest or coldest ever, and every winter is either the warmest or coldest ever.

People have a very bad weather memory, and the media turning every storm into an "event" has only made things worse.

Bonus points if you actually think your part of the country is the only place where the weather changes every 15 min....

 

[daftandbarmy]

Based on my experience, every summer is the hottest or coldest ever, and every winter is either the warmest or coldest ever.

People have a very bad weather memory, and the media turning every storm into an "event" has only made things worse.

Bonus points if you actually think your part of the country is the only place where the weather changes every 15 min....

And don't forget abut the terrible, world ending earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that will decimate every city around the Pacific Rim of Fire.

Oh, wait....

Average house price tops $1M amid sales surge for luxury homes in busy June

An unusually high number of luxury home sales in a busy June pushed the average selling price for a single-family home in Greater Victoria to more than $1 million for the first time. The record of $1,014,746 beats out the previous high of $986,602 set this year in March.

https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/average-house-price-tops-1m-amid-sales-surge-for-luxury-homes-in-busy-june-1.24164266