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Scientists Find Bigger than Expected Polar Ice Melt
GENEVA - Icecaps around the North and South Poles are melting faster and in a more widespread manner than expected, raising sea levels and fuelling climate change, a major scientific survey showed Wednesday.
The Antarctic icecap has warmed more rapidly than the global average. (AFP photo) The International Polar Year survey found that warming in the Antarctic is "much more widespread than was thought," while Arctic sea ice is diminishing and the melting of Greenland's ice cover is accelerating.
The frozen and often inaccessible polar regions have long been regarded as some of the most sensitive barometers of environmental change and global warming because of their influence on the world's oceans and atmosphere.
Preliminary findings from the two year survey by thousands of scientists revealed new evidence that the ocean around the Antarctic has warmed more rapidly than the global average, the World Meteorological Organisation and the International Council for Science said in a statement.
Meanwhile, shifts in temperature patterns deep underwater indicated that the continent's land ice sheet is melting faster than reckoned.
"These changes are signs that global warming is affecting the Antarctic in ways not previously suspected," the statement added.
"These assessments continue to be refined, but it now appears that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing."
Shrinking sea ice was expected around Antarctica, while Arctic sea ice decreased to its lowest level since satellite records began.
During the survey in 2007 and 2008, special expeditions in the Arctic also found an "unprecedented rate" of floating drift ice, providing "compelling evidence of changes" in the region.
But the focus was on the erosion of land-based ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic, which hold the bulk of the world's freshwater reserves and can generate sea level changes of global scale as they melt.
"That was an urgent question three years ago and I think today it's now a more urgent question," IPY director David Carlson told journalists.
When the survey began two years ago, those areas were viewed as largely stable despite some worrying signs of fringe melting.
The joint statement concluded: "The message of IPY is loud and clear: what happens in the polar regions affects the rest of the world and concerns us all."
The survey also revealed that the melting has the potential to feed more global warming in turn as the permafrost melts faster.
Permafrost, the expanse of continuously frozen soil in polar land areas, was found to have larger pools of carbon than expected and the melting could unleash more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The scientists also found that global warming caused substantial changes that were tantamount to a greening of the Arctic landscape.
Vegetation and soil were changing in the region, with shrubbery taking over grassland and tree growth shifting according to changing snowfall, while insect and fungi infestation increased and species move from lower latitudes into polar regions.
Those shifts also disrupted native animals, hunting and local livelihoods, the scientists found.
In some instances, reindeer raised by local herders lost grazing pasture while their migration routes became blocked by building in areas previously regarded as uninhabitable.
The survey around both poles was the first of its kind for half a century, revisiting areas that have not been seen since the 1950s and mobilising 10,000 scientists around the world.
84 Comments so far
Show Allglurg glurg glurgle...
yeah get the seams on your boat caulked ricg. what? you don't have a boat? i can hardly wait to hear from the climate change deniers on this one.
You can bet that Sigurder and MiMics will soon be screaming about 'flimsy data' and 'climate change conspiracy' anytime now.
But the truth is, there is so much accumulating hard FACT that global warming is going to be much worse that we think, and will lead to disasters unseen by humans in more than 10 000 years.
Walk in peace.
Hello
See article http://www.prisonplanet.com/global-warming-has-paused.html.
So who is lying ?
It's a slight of hand trick to cherry pick the time period you want to use. For instance, I can say it was much colder this morning and it is getting colder this evening to bolster my claims that by springtime we are going to be in a new ice age.
But you can look at the lost ice mass by satellites to know that the data must have been collected by oil companies who own many of the weather reporting stations where oil extraction (in Alaska for example) is going on. It would not help them to admit that their rigs are sinking into the permafrost and had to be abandoned, would it?
We might do something radical, like say, get off oil!
The "little ice age" cited in the article was caused by a huge Volcano in Indonesia in the 1770's that blanketed the sky and caused "the year without a summer." It had nothing to do with the planet getting colder, imho.
There's a new "Niagra Falls" in the middle of Greenland that wasn't there a few years ago. These "Moulins" as they are called are the cracks in your ice cube letting you know that puddles of water are not far behind. But unlike that PP article, I will give you some of the source of my data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
Here's an excerpt:
Positioned in the Arctic, the Greenland ice sheet is especially vulnerable to global warming. Arctic climate is now rapidly warming and much larger Arctic shrinkage changes are projected.[4] The Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced record melting in recent years and is likely to contribute substantially to sea level rise as well as to possible changes in ocean circulation in the future. The area of the sheet that experiences melting has increased about 16% from 1979 (when measurements started) to 2002 (most recent data). The area of melting in 2002 broke all previous records.[4] The number of glacial earthquakes at Helheim and the northwest Greenland glaciers increased substantially between 1993 and 2005.[5] In 2006, estimated monthly changes in the mass of Greenland's ice sheet suggest that it is melting at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres (57.3 cubic miles) per year. A more recent study, based on reprocessed and improved data between 2003 and 2008, reports an average trend of 195 cubic kilometres (46.7 cubic miles) per year.[6] These measurements came from the US space agency's Grace (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite, launched in 2002, as reported by BBC.[7] Using data from two ground-observing satellites, ICESAT and ASTER, a study published in Geophysical Research Letters (September 2008) shows that nearly 75 percent of the loss of Greenland's ice can be traced back to small coastal glaciers.[8]
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Prison Planet website is produced and owned by Alex Jones. Alex Jones thinks global warming is caused by sun flares. Alex Jones also flunked out of community college... and then decided to run for office as a Republican state representative in the Texas House District 48. He failed. Alex jones also believes you can turn your car into a perpetual motion machine by using your car battery to split water into hydrogen and oxygen and feed that back into you gas tank.
Hey if you think he's credible, so be it. At best I find his rhetoric style bellicose, authoritarian, masogynistic, and severly ill-informed. At worst- he might even be a manufactured scapegoat created to pin the label 'conspiracy theorist' onto.
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"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein.
Ed note: white phosphorous, dense metal super weapons, nuclear stick-up, missile defense, bailouts and propaganda!!
The site you are referring to is sponsored by Alex Jones, a right wing radio host who fulminates, "They are going to take your guns," and is peddling a video called, "The Obama Deception." That is where the "science" of the "skeptics" is coming from.
February 18, 2009
"Satellite sensor errors cause data outage"
As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data. See below for more details.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Two months, does not a trend make. Greenlands glaciers have been receding for years. Since 1979 it's clear that the "rate" of melting change has been accelerating. Also the speed which these glacier are rumbling into the sea has tripled in some cases.
Click here if you dare:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0811-06.htm
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
And this story is even scarier:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/08/4409
An excerpt:
It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said:"It is too late already."
What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds, possibly thousands. "Moulin" is a word I had only just become familiar with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did previously.
Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of Niagra Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts on ice and Greenland in particular.
We were visiting Ilulissat, Greenland, once a stronghold of Innuit hunters but now with so little ice that the dog sleds are in danger of falling through even in the depth of winter.
But it is not the lack of sea ice that worries scientists and should be of serious concern to the inhabitants of coastal zones across the world. Cities like New York and states like Florida are in the front line.
Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem, the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up.
Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the iceberg which sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.
Robert Correll, chairman of the Artic Climate Impact Assessment, from Washington told me:"We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea.
Gulmp.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Venice, Hong Kong, London, ALL of Florida, Los Angeles, most of the Polynesian Archipelago, the entire Texas coastline, New Orleans, Cairo, Tokyo Vancouver, Seattle...
Just a few of the cities/regions that will be innundated in the near future.Walk in peace.
It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Mother Nature is coming, and BOY is she pissed!
"Nature, red in tooth and claw..."
Walk in peace.
Well, no. Mother nature is coming and she is not cluttered up with a bunch of facts to do what she does.
Sigurd, Sigurd???
The biggest stint of the 'creationists' that ruled this country for the
last eight years (and undoubtedly before) was the introduction of
the term 'Global Warming'. The desired results popped up
everywhere in the US.
Mostly 'republican', low or no-educated constituents, supported by
a deluded 'God-Whispers-In-My-Ear' criminal wanted-to-be-president,
bought into the rightwing and neo-con thesis that 'Global Warming Is
A Hoax', that was incessantly propagated during the last eight years.
Not only that. The refusal of the US to engage in a serious attempt to
comprehend the consequences of a failed energy policy was and still
is program. Changing deniers in office has not changed that in the least.
Example given for Hawai'i:
Here on the Big Island of Hawai'i we had mayoral elections together with
the Presidential ones. In spite of available candidates that carried the
message of self-sustainability, the one candidate won, whose campaign
was heavily supported by the same powers that have ancestral ties to the
people that overthrew the Hawai'ian Monarchy in the first place. With
slogans of 'creating jobs, jobs, jobs' and a massive wall papering of the
guy's face, much like a campaign in a Banana Republic, the Big Island
sheeple elected of course more of the same misery that they already had
before. Only the least informed or most deluded amongst us were
oblivious to the ensuing economic crash. As of now, people on the Big
Island are starving from hunger. The average job offers in the only local
paper are a whopping 10 ads, with occasional spikes up to 21. The
amount of 'Hummers' and 'Big Wheelers' (trucks that are equipped to
bring down an already lousy MPG ratio) has increased dramatically.
As if there is no tomorrow.
My 'Hummer - It Can't Get Any Dumber' slogan becomes even more
relevant with the latest findings of the IPY. I have posted and propagated
repeatedly, that the right term is 'Global Climate Change', not 'Warming'.
Since the late eighties I study the climate models pertaining the 'Great
Ocean Conveyor' or 'Thermohaline Ocean Currents', our planets
'Cooling system'. With enough freshwater introduced into the oceans,
the 'Water pump' that circulates and regulates the heat of the Pacific and
Indian Ocean, will stop. It did it before, as core drills in the Greenland
Ice Shelf and Atlantic Ocean sediments showed as early as 2000.
The consequences of this 'Pump failure' are devastating and led to an
exaggerated, but still plausible Follywood movie "The Day After
Tomorrow'. The crime with the flick was the exaggeration, sort of
ridiculing the real consequences of a conveyor failure in a mix of drama
and love story.
Back to Hawai'i, where lawmakers decide to do business as usual.
Filling their own pockets and playing government. The only branch
that really prospers is the local executive and legislative. With ever
more ordinances to take away constitutional rights from an occupied
citizenry, the so called 'Aloha Spirit' is ditched for the me first mentality
that has developed over the last eight years. The scale of wastefulness
has reached massive proportions. Instead of preparing the Islands for
a catastrophic sea level rise, money is squandered in unnecessary
projects, that nobody really needs.
While the Big Island has a steep coastline for the most part, Maui is
threatened to lose its Central Valley, the connection between East and
West Maui. Where Hilo will lose its low lying areas including the
commercial zones and the airport, all the fancy tourist bunkers on Maui
will be accessible with a surf board soon. Kahului is partly slightly below
ocean level and will become the Hawai'ian Venice. Honolulu with the
biggest part of the Hawai'ian population will have insurmountable troubles
ahead.
Since there is nobody really interested in those kind of scenarios, I
created my own movement to make people aware, that ocean front
properties will move inland substantially and that the net amount of
inhabitable areas on the islands will shrink dramatically over the next
ten years.
Having listened to the Presidents speech last night, it became once
more apparent, that there is no hope for, but delusion amongst those
who cheer to the unchecked militarism, that has brought this country
down. We are still celebrating a murderous military, wasting away the
basis for life of our descendants. The biggest problem human mankind
has right now is not some self made and self promoted terrorists, no, it
is the militarism, the military industrial complexes of the world, US being
of course the leader. Exceptionalism at its worst. Without a total global
disarmament and the overcoming of the delusion that might and fight
makes right, our funny days are definitely over. The remaining humans
that will survive the planetary 'Endlösung' of the human race, will kill
each other off for the last available and sparse resources. And we will
end up where we started out. In the trees and in the caves.
Aloha from Hawai'i to those who know what needs to be done now.
It's Just Karma
Okay, here we go again. This is the chemistry, folks. It ain't hard:
3O2 + 2CH4 -> 2CO2 * 4H20
I.E. for every 3 molecules of oxygen which are sucked out of our atmosphere by burning a hydrocarbon (my example uses methane but any hydrocarbon reacts the same way) you have not only added 2 molecules of carbon dioxide, you have added TWICE as much water (4 molecules of water for every 2 molecules of CO2). ThAT WATER IS BRAND NEW. It wasn't there before. Get it? It adds up fast. Water vapor is a stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Water vapor increases sea level AND warming AND helps proliferate disease and fungal infections in plants and animals.
I always wonder why all the hysteria about lack of available water in the future. That's the exact reverse of our problem. Get this through your heads, people: Reduced oxygen levels mean death for oxygen breathers.
Sometimes I suspect the "we're running out of water" thing is so some corporation can charge some ridiculous amount for privitized water. I guess they'll charge us for oxygen next. It would be a great business model for wall street. Pay us or you suffocate.
Lack of ice is the least of our problems. Cut the internal cumbustion engine out of humanity and we have a chance. Go electric; LIVE.
AGG - Again, WHERE DO YOU GET THE ELECTRICITY?!
Besides, most of your so-called 'new water' will fall on the oceans. Won't help us land dwelling crittters in the least.
Walk in peace.
Common man, you don't seriously think we need internal cumbustion to generate electricity, do you? A world wide (not just the USA) electrical grid from wind, waves and solar panels would give much more than we need. And then ther's geothermal which has more available heat than we need for a million years or so. The earth is hot, pal. There are mountain tops where the wind never gets below 50 mph. There are deserts where solar panels would improve the ecology by providing more shade and making them less arid. The main stream media makes it all look so hard and expensive and difficult. It's bullshit, man. We spend almost a trillion bucks a year on pentagan outlays. Do you seriously think we can't spend 25% of that to have an all electric sustainable economy? There are people who stand to lose there ass if the oil pigs go down. The nascar crowd can race in electrics and put loudspeakers on the cars if they want to make noise. They aren't the problem. The oil corporations ARE the biggest terrorists and threat to the human race that we now face. That's why they spend so much on PR to snow us. Wake up, man. They're making fools of us while they laugh all the way to the bank.
And what do you use to extract and process the raw materials to make the solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal energy stations? How do you move the materials to the selected site? What do you use to place the miles of transmission cables and transformer stations?
I agree, fully, that modern Western civilization is at the mercy of the oil backed corporations.
But the problem is WE HAVE NOTHING to take the place of the energy hydrocarbons produce!
It is extremly energy dense in a conveinient form for transportation. It is the SOLE REASON we have the life we do.
Peak Oil hit the world in 2006. Peak Coal is about to hit, perhaps in the next 2-3 years. Which will lead to Peak Nuclear, Peak Resources, and Peak Food.
Without hydrocarbons, in the form of oil, coal and natural gas, 99% of what we recognise as modern society can't exist. Period. So electric Nascars with noise makers won't matter. People will be too damn busy just trying to scratch out a living on their own little garden plot, and scavenging whats left of the processed materials in the ruins of the former metropoli.
Walk in peace.
(PS - DO you really think any self respecting redneck would tolerate an electric car racing in circles? They would gun down the driver, pit crew and sponsor who tried it!)
Galenwainwright, you're right that hydro carbons are currently the most energy dense energy source. But it doesn't have to be that way. The problem is in who owns the means of production... the oil companies themselves of course. And they are the last people on earth who want to re-invent their means of production.
But there's tons of stuff out there and that's about to bring an energy shift. New anti reflective coatings for solar panels that let them absorb 99% percent of the light that hits them- making them super efficient. Or the holy grail of battery technologies- a non chemical, energy dense super capacitor battery (basically simular to your camera flash capacitor) that could be charged in 2-3 minutes, and a life cycle of hundreds of thousands of chargings.. if this one succeeds cars will definitely become all electric.
Some of these new inventions or even better ones may already exist. Problem is, with copyright law and the way that capitalism games the system... the big oil companies actually have it in within their power and self interest to buy up the rights to any new technology that threatens to compete with their fossil fuel age junk.
I mean, a lot of the green technologies like geo thermal, or small wind turbines, or solar power for instance are best suited for installation and use in your backyard, on your roof, on YOUR PROPERTY. Now how's Chairman Fossil Crunk going to get his monthly cut of that?
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"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein.
Ed note: white phosphorous, dense metal super weapons, nuclear stick-up, missile defense, bailouts and propaganda!!
Ok... one more time... slowly:
How...do...you...EXTRACT...and...PROCESS...the...raw...materials?
It's not having the concept of the technology that is going to be a problem... it will be coming up with the nessesary RAW MATERIALS AND RESOURCES.
Look at it this way... you need to build a boat to cross the water to get to food. But you are living on a barren, stoney outcrop with no trees, or animals, that you can make a boat out of. You know your ancestors built boats (that's how they got to this now stoney outcrop), and you have the knowledge of HOW to build the boat. And you have the tools to build the boat.
But... you have NO MATERIALS to build the boat.
What can you do?
...learn to swim. And hope you reach land before you drown.
Walk in peace.
That is a minor piece of the energy pie. It's the efficiency exception, not the rule. Yes, extraction and manufacturing may not run on clean energy... but the long term service life of the technology itself will. Your rebuttal does not take into account the metrics of scale and service life- where the clean technology payback is realized.
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"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein.
Ed note: white phosphorous, dense metal super weapons, nuclear stick-up, missile defense, bailouts and propaganda!!
From all the research I have done over the past 5 years, the biggest stumbling block (after resource extraction) is *scalability*.
Most, if not all, alternative energy 'solutions' simply cannot meet the demands of modern technological society, efficiencies and maintainence (service life) not withstanding. Add to that most of the alternatives do not produce anything close to the required energy density or portability. Almost all of them are tied to a single fixed location, and their output is lower per capita than the energy that went into creating them.
If you are talking exotic non-chemical batteries, you are wrong. No such thing. All batteries DEPEND on chemical interaction. That's just the nature of the beast. And if you are using exotic metals in the battery, what are the health effects, and most of the suitably reactive metals are quite toxic.
The only realistic view is to lower our expectations and make do with MUCH less, abandoning many technologies, and living within our means in a MUCH smaller footprint, with a lower population.
Walk in peace.
"The only realistic view is to lower our expectations
and make do with MUCH less, abandoning many
technologies, and living within our means in a MUCH
smaller footprint, with a lower population."
Living within our means + new clean technology =
Bingo.
Although I agree with much of what you say and also agree with your points about exotic materials for batteries and for many allegedly 'green' technologies I think you are making a classic error when it comes to your extraction and processing arguments.
For example, lets take mining.
Why do you have to mine anything using petroleum based equipment? I know it isn't a popular method of mining any more, but when they used to mine coal seams through shaft mining ALL the mine operations were run by electric equipment. You cannot have a combustion engine working a mine and eating up precious air. My point here is NOT about the coal, my point is that heavy equipment has ALREADY BEEN IN EXISTANCE for a long time that is NOT combustion based.
Most manufacturing that I am familiar with actually uses electricity as the energy sourse. Why does a combustion process need to be the supply for that electricity? True, TODAY, it is. And also true, if you make a windmill TODAY it is a coal fired plant that will supply the electricity for manufacturing. But when that windmill comes on-line then it supplies the electricity to make another windmill.
Solar cells also apply here too. TODAY it takes electricity to make them, and that electricity comes from burning coal. But then when that solar cell enters the grid it is being used now to make more solar cells.
I see no reason why electricity cannot be used for most manufacturing processes. (indeed, I used to work for GM in the 1980's and toured many of their car manufactuing plants...electrically powered every single one..including the one which employed me.) ONce you concede that there are essentially no manufacturing processes that cannot be accomplished electrically and once you concede that even trains can run electrically (they do all across Europe you know..which is also thousands of miles across) then you have to ask whether a combustion process HAS to be the ulitmate source of that electricity.
And I fail to see why it HAS to be so.
Furthermore, even your complaints about the toxic materials aren't serous depending on their useful life. Let me exaggerate to illustrate my point. Suppose a car battery never failed and could be re-used over and over. We would be using batteries in modern cars that were first made in the 1930's (the technology hasn't really changed much since then) and no car battery would today be polluting a land fill.
My point of thie exaggeration is to illustrate that, although a battery is toxic, it is not toxic until it is thown away and no longer in use. So attention to reliability and useful life in addition to minimizing such substances can mitigate those effects. We just need to figure out how to provide the right incentives so that the costs of pollution are included in the costs of production.
To take your mining analogy one step further: Before they used electricity to run the machines to mine the various materials, including coal, they used brute human labor and primitive explosives. It worked just fine, especially if you had slaves or an exploitable underclass with lots of children (they could get into places to mine that adults could not).
And if you are mining coal with a localised coal fired powerplant, then that is a net energy loss to the consumer because your coal is being used in part to power your machines, even to make a windmill, which in turn is vulnerable to down time due to the variability of wind, and batteries can't handle the load forever. And you won't need just 'a' windmill. To handle the load it would be nessesary to have a field of windmills, all consuming energy in their production, another net energy loss, requiring you to extract even more coal to be consumed locally to run your windmill factory.
And where do you get the materials to build the steam power plant or windmill? More mining... which means more energy loss, and eventually, resource depletion and a loss of the entire mining instalation a sit is abandoned for a the few remaining coal or mineral seams.
It's a vicious downward spiral... and the sooner we recognise it, and adapt to the new reality of making do with significantly less, the better off we will be.
Walk in peace.
I'm sorry pal, but based on your logic, we'd prefer lots of slaves raising an engine to hoist it in the air than using mechanical advantage with pulleys. Your "can't do it without oil" (i.e. internal combustion) is just bigotry. Physicsman patiently went through the reasons we CAN extract anything we need and the fellow from Hawaii with the solar furnace made it just as clear. The mechanical efficiency of an internal combustion engine is shit (less than 18%). What's your problem? Sure there will be a transition period but are you such a purist that it has to be all or nothing? Patience is a virtue you do not have. And by the way, we all understand english here. No need to keep asking the question about "from where" and "how" and "more slowly". There are not unimaginative, uncreative people commenting here so please show some respect. Mocking people for discussing high tech is stupid and entirely besides the point. I began this whole thing talking about oxygen depletion; a subject you conveniently ignore. So fine, lock yourself in your garage and start her up. This is what is happening on a massive global scale since the oil assholes began trashing the world. Your version of progress looks like a tomb stone. We will fight, not you, but your willfull ignorance and resistance to change.
AGG - The slaves were replaced by the products of the 'Industrial Revolution'. And even using the mechanical advantage of pulleys and other simple machines requires the expendature of energy, whether it is human or technological. It has to come from somewhere.
I appologise about missing the point of your oxygen depletion (which could be a definite problem with a major methane release), but you never answered my question of where you plan to get the electricity to power the machines etc.
Oil and other hydrocarbons are the basis of our modern technological society. Oil especially, as it is not only a fuel, but a feed stock for thousands of items and processes our society depends on.
We are in trouble, and all we are hearing from our 'leaders' is... more of the same that got us into this mess.
Walk in peace.
Okay, I accept your apology.
Now then, as to the prime energy source, where to begin? All work processes are entropic. 100% efficiency doesn't happen in this universe. However, with mechanical advantage we can cheat, so to speak. Winches, gearing and such devices allow us to do quite a bit. Granted every time you introduce another transmission element between the source and the output, efficency suffers. But so what? Oil is terribly inefficient. Much is lost in heat just to produce work. Just because you get it out of the ground means nothing except that, in the grand scheme of things, you are cheating like crazy. You are coming into an energy loop at a convenient point after the oil has been formed. That's as unsustainable as you can get. You agree that we are at peak oil. Okay, we take part of what's left and transition our economy to solar, wind, wave and geothermal. Sure, one day the waves will stop. Sure, one day the sun won't shine and of course the wind won't blow but who cares. I'm not a deep ecologist who thinks we need to cull humanity to about 5,000,000 and live happily ever after killing the other 6 billion. The universe is a big place. The energy to travel and explore it is, for all practical purposes, inexhaustible. We can do it. I think we will because when the oxygen depletion problem comes out of the woodwork, the governments of the world will "get religion" on sustainability in a hurry.
I agree that in concept 'energy' is inexhaustable. That is one of the foundation blocks of modern physics.
The problem is, with present technology (which has not advanced appreciably in 50 years, even though in many areas there have been vast leaps in efficiency and miniaturization - we still have cars, rockets are still rockets, computers are still fast but DUMB adding machines, etc.) we have no way other than travelling very, very, very slowly through the universe, expending resources better utilised on earth.
Walk in peace.
Okay, what about 'my' solar furnace? I 'invented' a solar furnace
that works with mirrors and lenses. Theoretically You need only
one new processor, from then on You are able to melt anything
from (recycled) metal to (recycled) glass. Then You can manu-
facture more solar furnaces that operate for free.
Another invention of mine is the 'Solar Aggregator'. Uses the
same principle to operate a small scale steam power plant to
generate more electricity than You will ever need. For areas
where there is less sunlight, there are larger 'capacitors' to store
the energy produced at peak season.
This and other inventions that come to my mind will not be
patented, but made available as 'commons technology'.
And you are still getting a diminishing return on energy invested.
So you have a solar furnace. Bravo. Good for you. How are you collecting the materials to be melted and recycled? How are you getting them to your solar furnace? Bicycle? Horse and cart? What tools are you using to collect the materials? Hammer and chisel? Or power tools? Do you have the facilities to create new items from the recycled materials, or does someone else do that? How do you get your materials to their worksite? What does their worksite require in the way of energy? How do they obtain it?
What happens during the winter, or a cloudy day? Your solar furnace simply stops working, and the melted mateials must be laboriously chipped out because they have cooled and hardened, probably requiring a new crucible. More lost energy and time. If you are using your stored energy, that is a net loss of energy.
And what about the sensitivity of your furnace to latitude? In areas of the world that recieve less direct sunshine, the system does not work at anything close to the required efficiency. Why do you think the solar furnaces that do exist in North America are in New Mexico, California, and Arizona, instead of say... Alberta... or Quebec... or New York state?
As for the capacitors, where do you get the materials to make them? Do YOU have the facilities to make them? To deal with any potential toxic exposure?
See? Technology is not always the answer...
Walk in peace.
GWR, seems like you've developed an anti-technology fetish in response to what you call it's opposite: techno-fetish. Perhaps, then, you are reacting more to the MISUSE of technology, rather than to its inherent neutrality.
Technology is not neutral. What form the technology takes is inheirent in the design. For example, a gun is designed for nothing BUT inflicting injury, damage or death.
Most technology we have today contributes to our luxury and standard of living. How many cars does one family REALLY need? How many homes? You CAN live without TV or a cell phone. Why do we have 93 different brands of breakfast cereal, or fresh avocados in the middle of winter? I know, I know, it's because of corporations and their massive advertising campaigns telling us how much happier we would be if we only buy Brand X. That is a MASSIVE part of this entire problem we are discussing.
The problem I have with most of today's technology is peoples *over-reliance* on it and worship of technology as a panacea for unhappiness.
Just because I can use a computer and the Internet to hold this discussion with you and others, does not mean that I rely on it as the ONLY means of communication I have (I much prefer face to face over a cup of tea), and IF there were a general disruption of services, I have the personal will and resources to see myself through the other side. As demonstrated by Hurricane Katrina, there is a vast number of people who sit and wait for 'someone' to ride to their rescue, instead of seeing the warning signs, and getting the hell out of the way early on.
So many people, when their personal technology stops working have one of two responces these days. Emotional meltdown, or just chuck it and buy a new one, adding to the waste of energy and resources, contributing to the further ecological degradation.
Walk in peace.
(Kind of a throwaway comment) The solar concentrating mirror was invented as a weapon of war by the ancient Greeks. They used it to set an enemy fleet's sails aflame.
I'm drawn to comment on solar furnaces making more furnaces because of a science fiction story on my computer. It's becoming possible to land a very few lunar rovers on the moon, which when managed by humans on earth, can build furnaces and produce more lunar rovers. Robot factories are pretty amazing when you think about it. This is not the sorcerer's apprentice problem because people have to mind the store. However, they can expand nearly infinitely, perhaps stopping when tunnels under the moon can support about 10 billion people.
Small fly in the ointment for this dream: Given last weeks satelite collision, and the resultant 2000 new pices of orbital junk on unplanned orbits that could lead to a cascade failure that results in an orbital debris belt that shreds anything we launch, wouldn't it be smarter to learn to live within our small world and it's limits?
Walk in peace.
wouldn't it be smarter to learn to live within our small world and it's limits?
Perhaps, were it not for that old adage about keeping all your eggs in one basket. A point about the 2k bits of stuff floating in orbit; ( well a heck of a lot more than that, I think NASA is tracking 10k + objects that are as big as a baseball) They are something of a threat, but don't forget how big the area is that you're talking about. The actual chance of hitting one of those widgets is not that high, if it were wouldn't one of the shuttles have been taken out by the orbital debris by now?
The shuttles has actualy been hit numerous times. Just by stuff too small to do catastrophic damage to the craft.
The legitimate fear in NASA, USAF and ESA circles is that this expanding cloud of debris *could* possibly lead to a cascade failure of the hundreds of new, old and decommisioned satelites that creates a 17 000+ mph debris belt in the region most used by important LEO satelites and launch vehicles.
To get a VASTLY simplified image of what flying through such a debris belt would be like, get a good metal bladed high speed fan, wrap a hot dog in tin foil, and try to throw the hot dog through the whirling fan blades...get the idea?
Walk in peace.
All that debris, well most of it anyhow, will fall back to earth. It's a matter of time, I did think that most of the older sats have or had provisions made to send them back to earth and land in the ocean...
I could be wrong, but then again, perhaps such a thing never occured to the rocket scientists.
Perhaps the raw materials are there, but the will to use them wisely is not. Denmark seems to be successfully generating much of its power from windmills, and in Canada, heat is being derived from sewage. There are many ways to derive better usage of energy and conserve. For example, during the winter, I vent the clothes dryer into the house, which increases comfort by adding both heat and moisture. Also, using a simple fan, I've invented a way to move heat down from my attic on cold days. A modest input of electricity yields a sizable BTU output on sunny days. Combine that with increased insulation and the house holds that added heat for a long time. Extra insulation saves you money during the summer months too. So there are many simple things that one can do. I agree that technology cannot not solve all the problems of mankind, especially when it is used to benefit only a few (with respect to financial profit) or primarily to destroy. However, I think we should be careful to not throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
Stop the Idiocy called militarism/weapon fetishism/obsession
and voilá: Enough funds to switch to solar energy at a scale
only Science Fiction writers of the 20th century were able to
envision.
Have You ever heard of a large orbital mirror that sends down
to the Earth surface a beam to power gigantic steam power
plants? That's not only more feasible, it is cheaper than paying
a visit to Mars for PR reasons.
For the last 15,000 years man has wasted resources and manpower
to destroy itself. A military/weapon/police free world is not utopia,
it is the requirement to survive the consequences of a wreckless
egotistic world view.
If Obama wants to be like FDR, he needs to repeal the Marijuana/
Hemp prohibition, instated by the Oil/Pharma/Alcohol complex
to enslave the global population into carbon dependency.
I will not hold my breath for that or a military free world though.
But there are immediately implementable solutions available.
Period.
And how easy would it be for the M/I/C (just about the only people with the requisite heavy orbital lift capability remaining) to turn that orbital heat beam into a steerable weapon that could selectivly fry a city?
See, I can do sci-fi pie in the sky BS futurism too...
Add the fact that with last weeks satelite collision adding 2000 more peices of random junk in unplanned orbits, launching said mirror will, in all likelyhood, get shredded soon after lift-off, even IF the economy COULD handle such a program of debatable return. Hell, the Apollo Program nearly bankrupted the US back in the 70's. The real reason the US stopped sending moon missions was the cost of oil cut into such showboat programs.
So good luck with that whole 'Star Trek' (tm) happy-alienin-our-future shtick...
Walk in peace.
With all due respect, but Your arguments against this technology
don't convince me. To the contrary, the same people that invented
airplanes, helicopters, submarines, trains, cars and everything else,
where perceived as lunatics in their respective times. That though
did never deter people like Werner Von Braun who engineered
and launched the Saturn V rocket. He was ridiculed and belittled
in his young years, as much as Da Vinci or Jules Verne. You may
want to think about that the next time You board a jet airliner or
take the subway.
As I said, the solution is the military free world. Without that as a
prerequisite it's going to get down the gutter. For all of us.
Your point about the size of our military budget is a good one.
We spend through the budget 700 billion a year on our military.
But this doesn't count the wars. Those have been funded by 'emergency resolutions' to the tune of a further 400 billion a year.
This combined result is over 5 times the money that the sum total of the rest of the planet spends on their militaries.
If we spent only 1/2 what we are spending now, which would STILL out-spend every other nation on earth-one statistic gives you the scale of the money we are thowing down this hole.
If we spent 1/2 oru military budget on education instead this would mean we could hire about 8 million more high-school teachers every single year and pay them each $60k a year.
You can work through the numbers for your favorite programme or expense, even think about how much you would get back in taxes if you want (about $1k per year...though I think that would be a pretty ineffective use of the funds)
You will be astonished at what that money COULD have done and it might bring home to you just how poorly that money is spent.
I am not against the technology. Just the techno-fetishism that some people have that a 'brilliant invention' is going to 'save the world', but who don't stop to ask WHERE the base materials that make the wonder toy possible come from.
And since you brought up many of the most egregious murder techno-toys... The helicopter (as we know it) was the result of military research for a VTOL capable aircraft. Ditto submarines. Trains have been used until recently as the prime movers of troops the the battlefield. The first operational jet aircraft was the Nazi Me-262 twin engine fighter.
Werner vonBraun was a top Nazi scientist who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of slave laborers at the Nazi Pennemunde rocket facility. The only reason he wasn't tried for crimes against humanity was he was snatched up in Project Paperclip, that smuggled many of the leading Nazi scientists out of Germany and into the hands of the US, USSR, and UK missile programs.
Leonardo daVinci was an artist, anatomist, sculptor and genius who paid his bills by contracting weapons designs to the ruling powers of Italy.
It pays to know your history.
It is the ecology and resource shortages that have brought down EVERY SINGLE empire on this planet.
Walk in peace.
Most civil inventions were/are abused by the guys with the
tiny Wieners and enormous testosterone levels.
Von Braun was not responsible for the death of the workers,
the Nazi's were. After the Nazis discovered Von Brauns
work, he was theirs. Others fell for the Nazi crap too. Still
today, how many people buy into the 'National Security' BS
and justify all means to achieve 'security'?
The question is, what did the Nazis tell Werner and what was
he told by the Americans?
Da Vinci never had to 'work'. His dad was a wealthy lawyer
and his whole life was spinning around painting and inventing.
His military inventions were primarily intended to protect his
native Italy from the French invasion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_da_Vinci
History lessons, as much as they were/are biased in Germany
as well, were always more profound in Europe than in the US.
Sorry, but I had to mention that.
You are right in the sense that the sickos from the military
faction always hijacked people that promised to engineer an
edge over the enemy and many inventors were as sick in
their respective minds as those they invented weapons for.
The human drama.
But technology per se is our savior if used peacefully.
You may say I am a Dreamer, but I'm not the only one...
So the signed orders with vonBraun's signature condemning thousands of prisoners to be worked to death have no bearing?
He PERSONALLY supervised the factory floor, and watched in silence as men were maimed, poisoned and killed by the production of the death machines (V-1 and V-2 rockets).
vonBraun KNEW what the Nazis were doing. Yes. And he joined them as a means to his end of making a manned rocket capable of going to the moon.
I know where you are coming from.
I was once a techno-fetishist too. Bought into the whole 'the future is wonderful' lie. But then I saw the price technology was extracting from our world and our children.
It's time to put away our toys and clean up our mess.
Walk in peace.
I agree, Galenwainwright, the human race is rapidly exceeding the Earth's capicity to support life - including our own. And, as wonderful as technology is for many people, it's because of our use of technology that we are able to over due it. I come to the same conclusion as you - we will either choose to greatly reduce our consumption and live much more simply (and locally), or nature will force us to so. New technology will not save us, though using some old technology could be sustainable.
As far as I can tell, the height of our consumption is almost over, if not already, and down we're heading. As I read somewhere, the way up is a whole lot better than the way down!
Pay us or you suffocate.
Kind of like medical system we have in US now, isn't it?