When I was a kid growing up in Western New York in the 1980s and 1990s, we had snow that would stay. I could build a snow fort with my dad that would last a month and get taller by the end of March.
In 1985 or 1986, all the snow melted for a day and it turned 80 degrees, in MARCH!
In 1995, I didn’t have any snow in my backyard for three weeks in January. It only rained.
In 2005, I could walk through my neighborhood with only a light jacket, on Christmas Day.
This year, one week in February was as cold as I could ever remember – four days with single digits and sub-zero windchill.
In the 1660s there was a mini Ice Age in which the Swiss thought their homes would be swept away by glaciers and many important food crops failed.
In the 1930s, the Great Plains of the U.S. faced the longest, dryest period in the past 200 years, we had the “Great Dustbowl.”
And what ever happened to the hole in the Ozone layer?
You know, this is all anecdotal evidence. No one is going to be able to prove or disprove global warming or its causes any more than the same team of scientists can prove the existence of God. It will take decades to accumulate the evidence to “prove” anything.
I’m not saying it isn’t so, I’m just saying it does sure seem different out there and I don’t know why.
Well, I think it is good that we can have these discussions. I don’t think any of us, or many of us, would disagree that it is important enough to get a solid handle on the matter…even if it is just to laugh at the end and say we had it all wrong. The fact is that we are all in it together, and we’ll all experience what comes to pass. So, we should try to be kind to one another and think hard and learn all we can. It would be better for everyone of us if we have a large core of “doers” who help us to overcome whatever problems befall civilization. If it it to be global warming and its after-effects, then let’s work together, not at cross purposes.
I do worry, seriously, about getting locked into a mindset. If any of you are interested, go to http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/ and look for this Wednesday’s episode of “How to think about science”. The entire series, now several months long, is devoted to interviewing luminaries who have cautioned us to question where science is going these days. For this week, Leo Smolin of the Pyramid Institue for Theoretical Physics worries, quite articulately, that we seem to be towing a familiar, perhaps facile, line in physics these days, and that we seem to be quelling the iconoclasts who actually further our understanding. It gets campy, once politics drives something, to talk a certain talk, but it shuts out the great leaps of vision that Einstein had over Newton for example. Any great advance we have made has some from a lone voice that gets it, not from the legions of naysayers.
To all of you, even though this thread has taken an off-topic cant, it doesn’t have to go bad, or get personal. Let’s be courteous and enjoy some banter, maybe some real education from someone with the learning, and try to keep it friendly and ongoing. I don’t want to have to be a participant and a bug squasher at
As you indicated by the 24" of fiberglas in your walls, reduction in heating needs are hard to achieve without either drastic remodeling of existing houses or change from house-based to tenement-apartment based living patterns.
Even the tips for “green driving” are perhaps of marginal, maybe 10 or 20 percent saving for the most conscientious practitioner.
But my tips for reducing electric use – I have demonstrated electric use of about one third of a median value – these are perhaps knick-knacky things, but they really work. Some of the things, like weighing baskets of clothes to determine optimal dryer settings, constant monitoring of indoor and outdoor humidity gauges to control the A/C, constant monitoring of dehumidifiers to see that their humidistats are working and that the units are not stuck in constant on until they become blocks of ice, hacking the microprocessor on a high-efficiency furnace to make sure it is high electric efficiency, these are engineering freak things today that will become standard features on appliances tomorrow.
In the face of this, I support increase in electric transmission and coal-fired generation capacity to the displeasure of my “green” compatriots. We are in a crisis situation with regard to oil, and affordable electric power is a direct substitute for sky-high oil in home heating. The current “green” agenda is to drive electric conservation with ever higher electric rates.
Unfortunately it is still there; however, the science studies for 2007 show that the hole has actually shrunk in size from 2006, which is a bit of good news. Perhaps the reduction in use of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) has helped.
Come on, I wasn’t speaking about Al Gore and you know it. I was referencing respected scientists and not retired politicians. But if I were you I’d be very reluctant quoting from the likes James Inoke and John Coleman.
Mr. Inoke is a Senator from Oklahoma with extreme views on most anything relating to scientific research. He is an ardent supporter of creationism (aka: Intelligent Design) and would like to revisit the dark ages by banning the teaching of evolution in schools.
And your favorite weatherman John Coleman is just that, a weatherman. A weatherman in San Diego where predicting weather is something even I could do. Yes, he was the founder of the Weather Channel but has no credentials on long term studies of global climate change. I would love to see Mr. Coleman, or you, reference just one peer review article refuting what most main stream scientists feel about climate change. To add insult to injury, John Coleman has been refuted by the organization he belongs to, “The American Meteorological Society.” This organization has , on more than one occasion, stated that “The evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.”
So, I’m not asking for much…just name one peer review article on global warming that refutes what I’ve mentioned in this thread.
My employer consumes up to five 100 ton hopper carloads of coal per day in a district heating plant, and I am told as much as 70 percent of that goes to the makeup air in lab fume hoods, you know, the kind analytical chemists rely on so they are not poisoned by their workplace. The “greens” are in an uproar that this dirty, profligate use of coal must stop, but it does many useful things, like work on effective treatment for childhood cancers, discovery of the next generation of antibiotics, the study of stem cells to treat degenerative diseases and yes, provide office, lab space, and cooling of computers for internationally-renowned atmospheric scientists at the forefront of global warming. Of course many people fail to see the connection from that ugly central heating plant, with the Wisconsin and Southern blocking their drive home switching blocks of coal hopper cars, and all of the wonderous “discovery and knowledge industry” things taking place here.
Funny thing, our Faculty Senate has organized a Gaia Project for the whole faculty to get involved on all levels on the Global Warming problem. I was on an unrelated tour of a new research building and noticed unused lab fume hoods with doors partially open. If it were me, I would have big signs plastered all over the place, “Thou Shalt Close the Glass Doors on the Fume Hood When Not in Use So We Don’t Pollute the Biosphere with the Coal Smoke Used to Heat the Warm Air Going Up Out the Vent on the Roof of the Building.” I asked the scientist hosting the tour about this, politely as it were, being that I am just a dumb engineer and I am
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This scientist didn’t know the right way to leave fume hood doors when the hoods were not in use. I bounced this off the head person of the Gaia Project (remember, the 500 tons
Throwing fewer pollutants into the air is a good thing, but is CO2 a pollutant? We exhale it. We know that man’s use of fossil fuels creates CO2, which is added to the atmosphere. Volcanoes do the same. Plants consume CO2 and reduce its total atmospheric quantity. And an increase in CO2 causes the growth of more plants that want to consume it.
Most of the world’s CO2 is a component of ocean water. A natural warming cycle warms the oceans, which releases additional CO2 from ocean water into the atmosphere, so how do we know whether the CO2 is increasing because of what man is adding and thus causing warming; or whether natural warming is causing the oceans to release CO2, which then shows as an atmospheric increase?
Considering this ever changing, complex system of CO2 production and consumption, do we really know the total quantity of CO2 in the earth’s ecosystem and whether it is increasing or decreasing?
Regarding the use of fume hoods: We were always instructed by engineers to leave the doors open an inch or two when not in use. This provided a small draft within the lab to reduce the concentration of potentially harmful vapors. Did this in turn pollute the outside air? Yes. I am as guilty as anyone for not always following recommended environmental practices.
Although this may surprise you, I too support the use of coal and would welcome new nuclear plants in our State. My brother was an engineer (Pacific Gas & Electric) and helped design the Diablo Canyon nuclear site near San Luis Obispo, and no he wasn’t responsible for reversing the blueprint design. Anyway, he has always spoken quite highly of the safety and redundant safety designs in US nuclear power plants.
Someone help me think deeply for a moment. Wasn’t there an urban myth (and possibly true) that a man petitioned a California small town to ban “di-hydrogen oxide” because a person surrounded by it without a special breathing apparatus would suffocate?
Carbon dioxide, like all materials, exist in balance. Chemotherapy drugs are merely poisons which don’t kill us in small doses, they kill cancer. In too great of a quantity, the human life is snuffed also.
So, with carbon dioxide, the debate should not be about banning it, but what is the appropriate balance of it to everything else out there, so that Earth sustains the maximum potential vitality of life – whatever that means.
My 2 cents worth. At least the protesters did not figure out how to open the bottom (?) gates to dump the coal on the track.
I think it kind of comical that a group of protesters would try to stop a train load of coal & then try to dump the coal with shovels. Before the protesters could do signifigant amounts of disorder I would think they might hurt their backs.
I’m not sure who, but someone once coined the phrase: “The dose makes the poison.” You are so right about carbon dioxide, we just need to find the appropriate balance and level, and I’m confident that we will.
Exploring the production and consumption of CO2 to seek answers to questions of balance is fine and reasonable. My concern, however, is the widespread, if not near universal acceptance of dogma that says that manmade global warming is a fact of settled science that requires a worldwide average reduction of manmade CO2 by 80% within the next eight years in order to prevent the otherwise certain destruction of the planet. This is the issue that is on the table here.
People say that, for the sake of our children, we can’t afford to take a chance that this might not be accurate. What about taking the chance that all the sacrifice that an 80% reduction will require might not be necessary? I would like some of the believers to tell us how they intend to provide their share of the 80% reduction. You are not going to get there by caulking your windows, using less air conditioning, changing light bulbs, and buying bamboo flooring.
Actually, that is useful advice and it makes sense. That you would want to have an “idle” fume hood open a small amount to maintain air circulation to capture any residual fumes, either in the hood or in the room. My concern is not polluting the air with the low levels of VOC’s that the hood is drafting out into the outdoors – my concern is more along the lines of the large fuel bill and coal consumption of the district heating plant. Campus-wide education on fume hood operation could result in large dollar and CO2 savings.
My engineering mind has all manners of interesting questions. If you want to have a certain minimum draft through a hood for a lab work station, could you draw a red mark and tell people to “park the glass door” at the red mark when the hood is not in use? Or perhaps put a mechanical stop that the hood door does not close all the way? Or is there a reason to close the hood completely, as when initiating a chemical reaction that generates lots of fumes? Or maybe there should be an “idle draft port” to allow the needed bypass air when the hood is not in use, and the scientists and their students should be told to simply close the doors?
This almost gets into the science of steam locomotive firing, but firing a steam locomotive was an art taught to the union guys, so those university professors with advanced degrees should be held to comparable standards. The “tallow pots” were warned there were consequences to leaving the fire box doors open too much, and so on. Operating those hoods is exactly like econom
Actually, that is useful advice and it makes sense. That you would want to have an “idle” fume hood open a small amount to maintain air circulation to capture any residual fumes, either in the hood or in the room. My concern is not polluting the air with the low levels of VOC’s that the hood is drafting out into the outdoors – my concern is more along the lines of the large fuel bill and coal consumption of the district heating plant. Campus-wide education on fume hood operation could result in large dollar and CO2 savings.
My engineering mind has all manners of interesting questions. If you want to have a certain minimum draft through a hood for a lab work station, could you draw a red mark and tell people to “park the glass door” at the red mark when the hood is not in use? Or perhaps put a mechanical stop that the hood door does not close all the way? Or is there a reason to close the hood completely, as when initiating a chemical reaction that generates lots of fumes? Or maybe there should be an “idle draft port” to allow the needed bypass air when the hood is not in use, and the scientists and their students should be told to simply close the doors?
This almost gets into the science of steam locomotive firing, but firing a steam locomotive was an art taught to the union guys, so those university professors with advanced degrees should be held to comparable standards. The “tallow pots” were warned there were consequences to leaving the fire box doors open too much, and so on. Operating thos
May I suggest the following web site for your consideration: realclimate.org
There is a link on top labeled “Start Here.” Click on this link and you will be given numerous options, depending upon your own level of expertise, that will explain climate and global warming in what is considered an objective manner exclusive of politics. Give it a try and make an honest effort to pursue this topic with an open mind. All anyone can do is become educated and fact check claims that don’t seem reasonable.
Fine I will refuse to pull a coal train again, No more steam OUTLAW IT NOW!! Save the earth ban locomotives, Ban humans We produce more CO2 by breathing thant any machine. So Ban us. Hey I am overweight therefore I use more O@ and produce more CO2 cause of heavy breathing when exerting myself. That means I need to be taxed more by golly.
Get a grip 25 years ago you heard Global Ice Age, now its global warming??? Make up your mind. The Earth runs in patterns, cold some years hot others. Fact of life. In the time of the dinosaurs the CO2 levels were wayyyyy higher than the greenies are saying will happen maybe 50 years from now. Why is it always 50 years?So no one can refute them when they scream about what we need to do.
Go green no more toilet paper for you. Live in a wood houes FOR SHAME!!!Your online that means you have electircity how dare you use resources like this wasting energy on a forum about trains!!!Think of all the coal you save by shutting of your computer and not perusing these forums.
Anyway I am going to do my part. I am going to g do some situps, I am going to refuse to pull coal trains I will run in only notch 1 to save fuel and lower emissions. So whos going to pay my bills once my RFE fires me for delaying trains?
Send check or money order to me please Id like to make at least what I am making now so give generously. Thanks
Maybe you are correct, although I respectively disagree with you. I can and do understand the misunderstanding, confusion and passionate viewpoints on this subject.
I am far from being an expert on this subject; however, an effort is made to become well informed. I guess one problem is trying to find someone or something whose information you can trust. Not an easy task, but it can be done. In many cases it is not that difficult to fact check something being touted as gospel. And once something has been checked then it is up t
Why dont you see Al Gore and his cronies or anybody else that believes that Global Warming is happening debate the “facts” other than with the main stream media like. Why dont they go on the awesome show of The O’Reilly Factor (we know how much San Fran loves O’Reilly, Rush, Savage, FOXNews). Or be a guest on Rush Limbaugh? Go on FOXNews? Why be in bed with all the other networks? Do they have something to hide or just be in bed to further their cause.
It was stated earlier that many that say that Global Warming isnt caused by man signed their reputations saying that man isnt causing it, but yet Gore and his cronies wont put their reps on the line.
Interesting thought, look up on how much energy Gores house uses and then look up President Bush’s house.
I love it when folks like Wayne walk right into it…
Wayne, there are thousands of peer-reviewed articles that refute the notion of anthropogenic climate change. Rather than list them all, here’s just a few for starters. PS - When you’re done reading these, I’ll link up some more!