Itâs just as much a matter of economic efficiency as it is energy efficiency. If a farm uses biodiesel that is made from crops grown on the farm itself, the farm may be more economically efficient, i.e., more profitable, than it would be if it used petroleum. Also consider that it would be very easy to use solar energy for things like wood kilns and crop dryers that would use petroleum on a conventional timber plantation or farm. Solar energy is not as concentrated as a gallon of gas so it is not as energy efficient in this regard. But if the solar is free it doesnât matter how much of it you have to use to serve your purpose. And in a broader sense organic farming is more energy efficient in that it does not use fertilizers, pesticides and other agro-chemicals that are dependent on petroleum. In my home garden I could spend about $15 for a chemical pesticide that would last me an entire year and have contaminated produce. Or I could spend less than $10 for some parasitic wasps that almost totally eliminate insect damage in my garden for an entire year. And if my garden were large enough to be self-sustaining I would have to buy the wasps only once and they would naturally reproduce in my garden. True. But consider that biodiesel, solar, wind and other alternatives can be used in place of petroleum when making biofuels. It takes more energy to heat corn enough to make ethanol than the resulting ethanol contains. So if you have to use petroleum to make the ethanol you have a net loss in energy. If you use biodiesel, solar, wind or some other alternative you have no net loss of petroleum-based energy when you convert wastes to alternative fuels. Furthermore you can make biodiesel and biomethane (from biomass wastes, manure and sewage) in most of the country without needing any energy input for much of the year, and what energy is needed can easily be solar. Any home with enough solar exposure could easily convert its sewage into biogas methane simply by putting the digester in a greenhouse. Making biodiesel is the only biofuel process I know of that needs any chemical input. Converting waste materials into biogas methane is a totally natural process- it happens whenever a collection of biomass is allowed to decay in an oxygen-free environment that is warm enough for the bacteria involved to operate. And why not make biogas out of sewage when you have to collect, process and dispose of the sewage anyway? Converting it to biogas is far more economically efficient than conventional treatment methods are- itâs a simple process that does not need industrial equipment. The Walt Disney company has been converting the sewage from its Florida theme parks into methane for over 30 years. It must be economically efficient or Disney wouldnât be doing it. What about Disney? Mickey Mouse doesnât live in the 1800s. You build a wave tank that mimics the natural landscape. However, the entire earth is too complicated to effectively mimic in a laboratory setting. You could not create a duplicate earth in order to test the effects of human activity on the earth we have. We think that plate tectonics work simply from observation. But do we know how (and why) they work without experimentation? Mere observations. Tell me how the dinosaurs got here without doing an experiment. DNA is simply a matter of chemistry- based on natural laws we can observe; no experimentation is needed to document its structure. It did take experimentation to document the role DNA plays in genetics. They are all observations, not explanations. Then what observation tells us that humans are the cause of global warming? How did the last ice age end without man-made greenhouse gases?
Organic farming does not automatically lead to greater production costs. I spend less on my home garden now using organic methods than I did using agro-chemicals without having any net loss in production. The ultimate goal of any organic farm should be to establish a self-sustaining agro-ecosystem, i.e., the farm would produce its own fertilizer, energy and pest controls. Once such an ecosystem is established an organic farm would require less cash inputs than a conventional farm would. The only reason why organic foods cost more than conventional foods do is the fact that consumer demand is greater than the supply. We have too few organic farmers to meet market demands. If we had more organic farms, weâd have less expensive organic produce. The reason why more conventional farmers wonât convert to organic methods is that they are afraid to. They will likely suffer smaller crop yields until organic methods have time to repair the soils that have been damaged by conventional means and the farmâs natural predator-prey balance is re-established. And many conventional farmers simply lack the time and inclination to learn how to use organic methods. I have had a garden almost every year since 1981 (starting when I was 13 years old). But, I did not give up chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides (except for ant-killer since I am allergic to ant venom) until about 5 years ago. I had to learn how to use organic means and the transition was gradual. Not when consumers have been trained to rely on and want conventional produce. Many people wouldnât touch an organic tomato or apple because they donât have the perfect appearance we expect in conventional produce. I donât advocate ethanol except when it can be made with renewable energy. Ethanol means a net loss in energy. It is viable only in Iowa and only in every 4th year. BTW: I have heard that the country of Brazil uses ethanol for all of its cars. The country launched a crash program during the oil crunch of the 1970s so it could eliminate all oil imports. But then Brazilian ethanol is made from sugarcane, not corn, so it takes less energy to make. They donât necessarily have to as long as businesses are kept small- just large enough to satisfy the demand in their neighborhoods- i.e., a region you can walk from edge to center in 10 minutes. Maybe. As long as land developers own and operate city hall and the zoning board they will be allowed as much urban sprawl as they want. Where I live it is not at all uncommon for the city government to build a 4 lane road through a cow pasture just because some developer wants to build a mall, office park or housing project. I am too used to the good old boy network and the political-industrial complex whereby developers get anything they want from city hall and corporations drive consumer demand. But is this any reason to throw away the French fry grease we have- much less let it be an environmental hazard when it is disposed of? And farmers could always plant more soybeans from which we can make biodiesel. BTW: you can use straight vegetable oil in place of petro-diesel in any diesel engine without modifying the engine. You have to clean and process used vegetable oil in order to make diesel fuel, but you can use the oil straight from the pressing plant. Define convenient and reasonably priced. Mass ridership of mass transit will require a sea change in the attitudes Americans have toward their personal automobiles. Most Americans will want the âfreedomâ of their own car no matter what the economic cost in money, pollution and time wasted in traffic. What about auto taxes and road tolls? Or more stringent pollution control measures or fuel efficiency requirements? Consider the role the government could play in the laws of supply and demand.
Iâm not saying the impact would be immediate or that these policies would be a cure-all. But they would certainly beat something like Kyoto. China is exempt from Kyoto and India may be as well. Thus Kyotoâs real goal is to hamper the economies of the Western World, namely the U.S. Consider what happened because of the energy crises of the 1970s. Because of conservation methods and alternative energy sources Americaâs economy was larger in the 1980s than it had been in the 1970s and our population was larger. But our per capita consumption of energy did not increase. We had a more energy efficient economy in the 1980s than we did in the 1970s. But, this trend was reversed when SUVs hit the roads in the 1990s. Energy conservation and energy waste are both learned behaviors. And just how do we know that human-made greenhouse gases is the mechanism of causation? You are making the assumption that you already know the cause before you have done any experiment. This is circular reasoning, not science. What if your room has a south-facing window that gets no shade? But is carbon dioxide the true cause of global warming? There are some scientists that believe urban sprawl, i.e., covering more of the earthâs surface with heat-storing buildings, parking lots and roads, has more to do with global warming than greenhouse gases do. Do some research on the urban heat island effect and look for urban warming. And how do you eliminate any alterations in solar activity and everything else that may have altered the earthâs climate in the past and thus may be altering the earthâs climate today? If the earth warms because of greenhouse gases, how did the last ice age end without the greenhouse gases we have today? Actually there is not. Urban temperatures have risen over the past 20-30 years or so, but the temperatures in the surrounding rural regions have either remained steady or actually decreased in some places. http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/ http://www.capmag.com/articlePrint.asp?ID=2004 http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807 http://www.junkscience.com/jan99/skewed.htm âThe theory of global warming is based on skewed data, state Climatologist Harry Hillaker told Legislative members in charge of environmental policy. âScientist have noted that the average global temperature has risen about 4 degrees since 1977, causing many to sound the alarm of global warming caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon monoxide. âIowa's historical temperature data has mirrored global data since 1884, Hillaker told members of the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee and House Environmental Protection Committee. âBoth matched up until 1977 when temperatures taken on land-based stations worldwide began rising faster than temperatures in Iowa. Taking into account year-to-year fluctuations, Iowa's temperature has been stable for the last 50 years, Hillaker said. ââI think we're measuring urbanization, not global warming,â Hillaker said, conceding that the upward global trend is subject to much debate. âSatellite global temperature measurements since 1977 closely mirror Iowa's fluctuations, Hillaker said in a report titled âHistorical Iowa Temperature Trends.â âThe difference between satellite and land temperature measurements could be caused by what's known as the âurban heat islandâ effect, Hillaker said. âUrban areas, due to pavement, buildings and concrete are warmer that the surrounding rural areas. ââThey're taking measurements from long-record sites, which means big cities,â Hillaker said. âThe State Climatologist Office, founded in 1874, is the longest continuously operating state weather agency in the United States. âAmong the issues facing the Legislature this year that could impact greenhouse gases is a proposal to require all gasoline sold in Iowa contain 10 percent ethanol.â If temperatures in Iowa, a predominantly rural area, have been stable for the past 50 years, then rural areas have not warmed the way urban areas have.
Thought experiment: 1. Place a heating element with a pot of water on top in a room that has an ambient temperature of 32 degrees fahrenheit. 2. Set the heating element on a timer that alternately turns the element on and off once every 24 hours. Set the heating elements temperature gauge to 72 degrees fahrenheit. 3. During the first 24 hours the heating element is on and the water temperature in the pot rises to 72 degrees. 4. During the second 24 hours the heating element is on and the water temperature falls to freezing. 5. Now, bring in a second heating element that will fit into the pot of water. This heating element has a timer and a variable temperature gauge that causes the element to start at 32 degrees and then slowly rise in temperature to 200 degrees fahrenheit over a period of one year. Note: assumption is that both heating elements are capable of producing enough energy to boil the pot of water. Hypothesis: The pot will eventually lose all of its water due to the increasing temperature of heating element #2, regardless of the fact that heating element #1 is cyclically producing no heat. Run the experiment. The result is obvious. Eventually, the pot will be empty of water. Some unknowns when comparing the above experiment to that of the Earth's environment are: 1. We don't know the duration of the natural cycle of ice ages with certainty. 2. We don't know the precise amount of heat that human activity will add to the environment over the duration of any natural ice age cycle. 3. We don't know where either #1 or #2 are in their progression from colder to hotter or visa versa. Some reasonable knowns: 1. We know that human activity is increasing and that such activity uses increasing amounts of energy and that energy generates heat. 2. We can estimate the likely amount of increasing heat energy from human activity by correlating past population growth with increased energy usage. 3. We can estimate the ice age cycle from geologic evidence. Question: Given all of the above, would you, if you were a political leader entrusted with promoting the general welfare of your electorate, decide to simply wait and see if the pot was losing water over time? Or would you assume that the thought experiment is a reasonable approximation of the forces in play, and try to take action to prevent the eventual loss of water? If your answer is to wait, then you are not doing a very prudent job of promoting the general welfare, in my opinion. One can certainly argue that the Earth is not an open pot. OK, then replace the pot with a pressure cooker and try the same experiment. I suggest that even if the pot loses no water during the experiment, that eventually nothing will remain alive in that water, due to the water's inexorable rise in temperature. So, there's your experiment. Could natural events cause a different outcome? Of course. We could have a pandemic or war that would wipe out half of the Earth's human population. We could offload our industrial production to the Moon so that heat generation on Earth would decline precipitously. But, as a political leader, if you intend to stave off the eventual and inexorable rise in temperature, then it falls to you to actually propose a solution and then attempt to put that solution into action. Otherwise, you are not a leader. And, at the moment, our "leaders" choose to ignore the situation, preferring to believe that God will take the faithful up to heaven before the pot runs empty. Depending upon God to sole this problem, is, in my opinion, not very prudent, at least not unless we can get God on the phone and obtain some confirmation that he/she/it is going to save us before it's too late. To me, such unjustifiable reliance seems a bit mentally disturbed. Nah, our leaders aren't delusional -- they can't be. After all, we voted for them, so what would that say about all of us?
How does any of this relate to something as complicated as the earth? Scientists believe that the earth has had at least one ice age and that this ice age ended when the human population was very small and there was no industry to produce greenhouse gases. So why should greenhouse gases, produced by human activity, be accepted as the cause for the earthâs present warming (assuming for the sake of argument that the earth is warming)? Such assumptions cannot be made about the earth. You cannot assume that the earth will continue to get warmer just because of greenhouse gases because you cannot discount the corrective measures the earth itself is capable of- such as volcanic eruptions (or forest fires) that block sunlight, thus allowing the earth to cool. We do know a little about the earthâs historic climate changes from human experience. The period surrounding the fall of Rome is believed to have been cool. The Medieval period was warm (wine grapes used to grow in Britain and in northern North America, i.e., Vineland), but then a period known as the Little Ice Age set in lasting until about 1850. So we know that the earthâs climate is fully capable of changing on its own without any appreciable human input. There is no reason to assume that human activity is altering the earthâs climate right now. That humans can add head is something of a misconception. Heat, like any form of energy, cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed into another type of energy. Humans cannot add any heat to the earth. We can only activate the solar heat that the earth has stored (fossil fuels) and increase the earthâs heat storing capacity (buildings, parking lots, roads). Only if we do not try to conserve energy. Are you certain of this? If we can estimate the earthâs climate cycles, when will the next ice age arrive? I wouldnât assume anything. Neither would I advocate a single policy to deal with a problem that may not really exist. The global warmongers generally insist that the only way to reverse global warming is through things like Kyoto. I have proposed policies that would reduce our use of petroleum and thereby reduce the greenhouse gases caused by petroleum. But, because my plan does not unduly burden business and industry the global warmongers want no part of it. How so? Just as long as the solution stifles business and industry to the satisfaction of the fanatic environmentalists. Otherwise the fanatics arenât interested. Who said anything about God?
But that has nothing to do with global warming. I am saying that the existing rate of co2 emissions is causing a warming, and co2 emissions are set to rise. There is absolutely nothing that can be done to counter this. Fighting human nature is impossible. Environmental policies like energy conservation and kyoto are a waste of time. We can only sit it out and see what happens. Not an assumption. Increased greenhouse gases will cause an increased greenhouse effect which will warm the earth. We know that humans have increased greenhouse gases, and so we have increased the greenhouse effect. It's not simply that people are saying temperature has gone up and so have greenhouse gas emissions. It is not an argument based on correlation alone - there is a known physical mechanism between the two. Then you can look at the trend of solar energy coming through your window over time and see how much of the warming it can account for. If it doesn't account for much, or can account for none, and the heater can, then you didn't need a control group to show that the warming in the room is caused by the heater. Just like the room example you look at trends in different factors and you try to attribute the warming to them. The best scientific knowledge at this time is that recent solar trends are only able to explain some of last centuries warming. The earth warms and cools for a lot of reasons. Greenhouse gases are not the only factor, but when attributing causes to the recent warming they come out as the primary candidate. I recommend you look at the points made here, because I cannot see them addressed in any of your links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island_effect
If what you have claimed above were true, then no one could possibly warm themselves with a fire. You need to rethink your position, because it is beyond ridiculous.
Carbon emission rates will not continue to rise if we were engage in 1970s-style conservation efforts while increasing our reliance on non-fossil fuel alternatives. We could deal with the atmosphereâs existing carbon levels by planting more trees. Something like Kyoto need not be our only option even if it is the only option the global warming fanatics want to accept. If you say there is nothing we can do to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere, you donât know how the earth operates.
Burning something is simply releasing the solar energy that nature has stored on earth. It does not lead to a net increase in energy.
Someone here is confused by what can really cause global warming. It's not caused by the heat from burning things. That heat is only a tiny fraction of the solar energy the earth receives. The vast majority of the solar energy is released by earth to the space in the form of the infrared radiation. When the amount the earth receives from the sun everyday approximately balances the amount the earth radiats to the space, the global temperature stays a constant. If the earth radiats less than it receives, the temperature goes up. If it radiats more than it receives, the temperature goes down. Here is where the socalled "greenhouse gases" come in. The earth's atmosphere is pretty transparent. So the heat from the earth can radiate out through the atmosphere. However, CO2 is very good at absorbing infrared radiations. So when the CO2 conent in the atmosphere is increased, it blocks more of the heat from radiating out. The earth radiats less out. OTOH, CO2 is very transparent for the visible light, which is the form of the solar energy coming into the earth. So it does not block incoming energy but blocks outgoing energy. That's why it's a "greenhouse gas." Other greenhouse gases all have the same effect. Why is Venus the hottest planet in the solar system? Mercury is closer to the sun but it doesn't have an atmosphere. Venus has a thick atmosphere full of greenhouse gases. It traps all the energy it receives and hardly any energy gets radiated out.