Thoughts upon the Future
With the threat of global warming and a global energy crisis looming overheard, what are your thoughts upon the future, if any? Are you optimistic, pessimistic, or somewhere in-between? And what are your reasons for being that way?
Personally, I am somewhere in-between at the moment. Individually, I think these two global problems could be remedied with some kicking and screaming along the way; however, neither one is waiting for the other, so I'm really quite unsure of what to think. There are so many scenarios that it boggles the mind. As of the last few days, I've been studying both as much as possible to gain insight, but with greater knowledge comes even more perplexing questions.
I'll try to elaborate upon my thoughts more later because I would really like to see your thoughts first.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."
I personally do not believe we are in a Global warming crisis but I do think we need to find a new energy source. I went to and graduated from Naval Nuclear Power School so I know a bit about subatomic power. There is so much power tied up in the subatomic and atomic level that it would boggle your mind to think of the stored power there.
Currently we have problems with "Cold Fusion" as it is called. One problem, among many, is the power to start the reaction is barely made up by the power released. Sort of pushing a car up a hill 10 feet tall and getting the energy return as it rolls down hill as if it were rolled up a 10 feet and 6 inch hill.
I do not know who or where it will come from but I think we will discover a new power source from some type of subatomic reaction. The best way to describe the magnitude is this. Imagine a car perfectly balanced on top of a wooden yard stick and that yard stick perfectly balanced on the end of a second yard stick. If you take your finger and push the yards sticks where they come together it would take a couple of pounds of force to cause the balance to be broken and the car will fall with thousands of pounds of force.
My thought is that this new power will be discovered by accident but it will be so simple to harness. There was a movie named "Chain Reaction" with Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman. In it a college student trying to make a controlled sub atomic chain reaction discovers by accident that sound creates a harmonic effect that makes this miracle work. I am not saying sound is the key. I am trying to illustrate my point. I think the discovery will be by accident, but simple to replicate. I think it will be clean like fusion not radioactive such as fission. I am for trying to find other clean power sources, that is the way of the future, in MHO.
Now the Field of Battle is a land of standing corpses;
Those determined to die will live;
Those who hope to escape with their lives will die. - Wu Chi
Of course it will be discovered by one of our great American scientists. The world will then look at the U.S. as the heroic leader it should always be viewed as.
Unless it is discovered in the Middle East. Then we will blow the living crap out of anyone that would threaten to use such an evil power.
One of my favorite Art Bell interviews was with a guy that created a machine to travel time and space. He pretty much figured it out when he saw The Philadelphia Experiment on HBO.
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We're doomed anyway.
But seriously, I'm extremely pessimistic. I see the world drifting into an Orwellian dystopia because every day I read about politicians taking away freedoms in favor of security. A new oil crisis is at hand and inflation hit a new high. There will be a big shift at least, a new world order if you will. Western societies like Europe and America will take a back seat to other economic powers.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'd say I was joining the winning team, but that'd imply there existed a time when I wasn't on team evil."
I'm optimistic. The problem with global warming is not that it's happening - that's a byproduct of the way our civilization currently runs, and we've changed massively before. The problem is that the conflict between the old and new ways of doing things is being played out in the media and in populist politics, rather than at the level of the science. This is change on the scale of the Industrial Revolution we're looking at - it *will* change our lives that much eventually. And we can choose to put it off for a while, but we won't escape the consequences of that. The artificial arguments against it vastly outweigh the scientific ones; that's also a byproduct of the freedoms we enjoy, and we take it for granted that mistakes get corrected by reality, eventually. I have confidence we'll come to that understanding, even though we'd rather be fat, dumb and happy, after we get knocked around a bit.
But I'm optimistic because eventually we'll get it as a global culture, and start to focus on how to adapt. That's what we do - humans adapt. If I'm nervous, it's because the US as an economic power has been slow to accept that we will need to change, and culturally, we don't want to change the way we do things. But we've been through changes of this magnitude before, and we'll do it. Maybe the hard way, if the traditionalists win the debate for a few years, but that kind of mistake will just discredit them after a time, and we'll get on track.
The danger is that we wait so long that the change becomes a violent cultural conflict. Hopefully, we are smarter than that. I'm optimistic, anyway.
I agree with Lone, nuclear is a good start. The tradeoff in storing (or more like reprocessing) the waste is starting to look better than the alternative.
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling, Listen to reason, Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground, Your head is there to move you around -- REM
Put me on the nuclear bandwagon. The only issue I have with nukes is that, unless we're ready for the proliferation of nuclear weapons capabilities, we're going to have to be ready to enforce a stratified system of haves and have nots -- with ascendant nuclear powers being labled "rogue states" and dealt with harshly.
I, for instance, think it would be a fantastic idea to build nukes on the Mexican side of the border along the California and SW border. In this way, we can pipe electrical power across the border, facilitate technology transfer, and take advantage of easier regulatory environments. The primary problem, however, is the possibility of a Mexican bomb.
There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism,... those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
Over the long term, 50 to 100 years, I'm quite optimistic, for many of the same reasons Robear is. But over the short to medium term, particularly the next 10 to 25 years, I see massive misery and economic dislocation. The world economy is broken. It's based on two main fantasies: one, that the United States can pay its debts, meaning the dollar has value, and two, that the world economy as is can be sustained. It can't; our present rate of consumption simply cannot continue.
The standard of living in the US is going to take an enormous downturn, and if the government reacts as I expect it to (printing money and taking on more debt to try to deal with the fact that its existing debt is bad), many of those dystopian scenes from Children of Men could come to pass in real life. I don't know exactly how things will play out, but it's going to be terrible, because we've been lying to ourselves for a generation, and untruths have piled on top of untruths in a dizzying array of models that are, fundamentally, wrong.
You can do that for awhile in economics, but not forever, and forever appears to have arrived.
I'm banking on some strange African virus killing us all, or turning us into zombies, either way, that should take care of the energy crisis.
African Rabies?
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Being a hopelessly pink-glassed optimist that I am, I think that the next administration will start a MASSIVE program of cold fusion research, and within a decade viable CF energy production methods will be developed. This will overnight raise the economic prospects of USA on the world arena, will solve energy crisis, and will provide a cheap/limitless energy source to do brute-force carbon dioxide and methane sequestration on planetary basis.
OK, maybe not.
P.S. Lone Sailor: on what are you basing your belief that the global warming crisis is not in effect? I mean, even Bush, of all the people, has acknowledged it as an issue.
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Gorilla, It is late right now so an explaination to your request will have to wait until later. The eplaination is long and could lead down more than a few bunny trails so I will have to put great thought into keeping it short but with enough data to be understood.
Now the Field of Battle is a land of standing corpses;
Those determined to die will live;
Those who hope to escape with their lives will die. - Wu Chi
Is this your own personal theory? Or maybe you could point us to a reputable source that we could read on our own, so you don't have to waste time cooking up numbers.
I mean, there is one reputable source that agrees with you, right? Because "crazy soldier guy's post that I read on the internet" won't be very persuasive if you indeed have a good point I might want to repeat.
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If we do get fusion working, everything changes. All the old rules go out the window. Working fusion power means, over time, extremely cheap energy at very high volumes. The change for human living standards all over the world would be miraculous.
The next environmental problem we'd probably have to deal with would be heat. All that power generation would make lots and lots of it.
That jump could be achieved through any number of other technologies as well. Nanotechnology has the potential to create much more efficient engines. The IC engine today has a theorhetical efficiency limit of ~33%. That means that for ever gallon of gas you put in your car 2/3 of that energy is wasted in dissipated heat. Increase that theorhetical efficiency to, say, 66% and you've effectively doubled the oil we have today.
There is only an up or down--up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order--or down to the ant heap totalitarianism,... those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
"Crazy soldier guy", Jayhawker? Really?
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling, Listen to reason, Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground, Your head is there to move you around -- REM
Indeed. Technically, he's a sailor.
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I'm pretty grim in my perspective on mankind's future. I've said it before, and I'll say it until the day I die: selfishness is the key to humanity's problems. Someone (I can't remember who) pinpointed what I've been trying to say for a long time in a thread this spring: tribalism is our problem. We need to evolve from tribal mentalities before we as a species will finally step up to the next stage of our civilization as a whole.
That and the power transfer would likely be blocked, like it is here in MN wit the Big Stone II plant they want to build in South Dakota. because it would be a new clean fired coal plant, and the Western half of Minnesota would be a major group of its customers without our people it won't get built. Our government refuses to allow it because they don't want to allow energy from non alternative energy sources. South Dakota, has issued the permits, and is eagerly awaiting the building of the plant (lots of jobs to build it, jobs to run it, and income)
"Also, I have four legs and am covered in wool. Baa!" *Legion* reveals his inner furry.
Or nationalized by People's Republic of Mexico, Atlas Shrugged-style.
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Yeah, I thought that was over the top, too.
Then I saw this thread: http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/39889?page=1
Now the description doesn't look so wrong.
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I apologize in advance for the length and number of bunny trails this may spawn, but here goes.
Gorilla, To answer your request I will try to keep it on point and short.
I do not accept the premise of man made global warming. Just as I did not accept the premise of man made Global cooling in the 1970’s or the premise of Man’s use of Freon hurting the Ozone layer. In 25 years from now global cooling will again be the flavor of the day. That is how it has been since about 1825 or so, 25 year cycles cooling then warming. I am sure goggling it will show the trend.
As you may have guessed I do not link things in my posts. I do not know how very well and I do not trust what the News or Bloggers post on the internet anyway. I may quote books but that would require looking it up to prove or disprove what I said was in the book.
With that stated you now know my benchmark.
Man made or other wise, global warming can not be proven OR disproven with the current scientific data. The reason is sort of simple. In 1700 what was used to measure the temperature? Or in 1750 or in 1600? Standardized temperature measuring devices were not invented yet. With that said we only have about 150 years of somewhat accurate data to go on. Before then it was people’s feelings of that winter was colder or that summer was hotter than 10 years ago. Because we do not know the earth’s true time of cooling or warming cycles it could be 150 years before the temps peak and 1000 years before they bottom out. We do not know. Is any trend we see a common hic up we see every 250 years or not. So from a truly scientific point of view we can only guess.
From this point on I can strongly argue both sides of Global warming from simple to complex.
Pro – Houses in Hawaii built pre WWII had fireplaces and were used often. They haven’t been needed in over 30 years during the winter.
Con – Many very old streets in Northern Europe are named after plants that can not survive the cold winters now.
(Without boring you with numbers which I would be asked to link anyway)
Con – I could argue that the ice in Antarctica has grown dramatically in the last 50 years.
Pro – I could counter it with the ice in the Arctic is melting in the last 3 or so years.
Con – Then that could be countered with Undersea volcanoes under the Arctic ice cap melting it all. This could go on and on. As I said I can argue both sides well.
I simply do not buy into Man Made Global warming or even natural global warming right now. I hope I did not spawn any bunny trails, I did not try to.
But I will leave all of you all with two items.
One, the consensus of scientists that is the bedrock of man made global warming are never stated to be Meteorologists. Many are actually not. I technically am a scientist so does my vote count here?
Two, I was briefed by a good friend of mine stationed in Antarctica about Antarctica. If I were a betting man I would fear Antarctica getting too much ice, as it has been accumulating, not the Arctic losing ice. The Arctic Ice is floating on water so if it melts the sea level really won’t change much. If the Antarctica ice, which is all on land, shears the seven mountains (my friend said seven and I did not look it up) holding it all back. The ice, which is miles deep, would slide into the ocean, well use your imagination.
Cheers,
Lone
Now the Field of Battle is a land of standing corpses;
Those determined to die will live;
Those who hope to escape with their lives will die. - Wu Chi
Cold Fusion also has an admittedly pessimistic downside. I fear that limitless energy means suburban sprawl will turn into world wide Vegas. When there is that much proposed surplus, there is that much opportunity for corruption and waste and the festering of poor habits and lifestyles.
And don't tell me world wide Vegas won't happen. The mega rich are already importing beaches!
Being fangoriously devoured by a gelatinous monster.
What malor said first. Almost word for word. Long term I think we'll be forced to adjust. It's happening now. People who used to drive gas guzzling cars 2 hours a day to work now moving, finding new jobs, bike commuting, I'm seeing the signs every day. My wife and I already walk/bike to work and I see the ways in which we're adjusting our lifestyle to compensate for a world where inflation is the norm and $4/gallon gas prices are going to be the floor for some time. So people will adjust, eventually the ponzi scheme will crash and it will be bad. Really bad.
And eventually we'll be better for it. We'll have to be or we won't survive. Thus I'm optimistic.
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Meteorologists and climatologists are significantly different.
Unfortunatly, if you happen to talk to many climate scientist, you will find that they do believe that there is enough evidence to say that climate change (global warming) is real. It is also, unfortunatly, man made.
I am not a climate scientist; however, I do have some close friends here who are studying this. One is in the arctic right now, measuring lake deposit core samples, which do give a nice picture of what has happened in the past (and what is happening right now). So, they know due to these core samples the mean CO2 levels in the atmosphere at the time of deposition, and can correlate that to the temperature.
Im not completly sure how they get their temperature readings but I believe it has to do with biomass levels at specific times. The arctic is good for this as it has a relativly short photoperiod, which can be measured, and then compared to more recent years (which we do have good readings for.
You will be very hard pressed to find many rebutable scientists who argue that warming is happening, and quickly; despite, what the lobbists/press tell you. There isn't much controversy in the science there (as far as those who are actually studying this have told me)
Lone, ice cores in glaciers tell us enormous amounts about former climate eras... we can measure the 150 years of ice layers we have accurate measurements for, and then reach back in time and look to see how the ice layers differed.
There's a great deal of information in ice, and there's little doubt that global warming is real and caused by humans.
The 1970s cooling scare was one caused by the popular media; if you asked scientists at the time, they were very non-committal, because they didn't have the evidence.
This time around, it's the SCIENTISTS who are upset, and it's the Republicans and the current economic powers pushing the idea that the scientists are wrong.
Betting against scientists, especially an overwhelming majority of them, is a very very very very poor wager.
This WSJ article would seem to indicate that global warming has been mostly discredited:
The whole article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html
Now, I don't claim to be particularly knowledgable on the subject, but I seem to be seeing a lot of articles lately that would seem to indicate the vast majority of the global warming 'symptoms' are invalid. My level of scepticism is definitely growing...
-- My Biking Team --
Maybe I am being overly critical about that article but...
1) No references cited. Usually means that anything stated as facts, arn't.
2) Do not listen to anyone who says we should start ignoring the science and look at belief, that is just stupid and dangerous.
3) I am very skeptical of opinion pieces in general, as it is just that; an opinion. He makes light of the thousands of scientists who are very worried about GW, for the few (2 listed I think) who arn't.
Ok so I was bored, so went on a hunt. I think the nature article he is refering to is ...
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0807/full/453601a.html
This caught my eye, as the original article references 1945 i think. (Or a year around there)
Here is an interesting article about Bret Stephens, the author of said article, and his conservative think tank, CEI, and how they are funded.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200612120006
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