Green Ideals 2

[KJbushway]

This doesn't deal with your ideas for your own house. This deals with what in your opinion will it take to change your country to start major thinking on green tech, and what do you think would be the first step in your country actually turning 100% green. Also how long do you think your country will take to turn that 100% green.

It can be your personal opinion or your expert advise becuase of your profession(if it is tell what it is please)

 

[T'Girl]

My home state is 75 percent hydroelectic and 10 percent nuclear. Another big dam or a few more nuclear reactors and we'll be there.

Neither hydro or nukes produce greenhouse gases, and you don't have to worry about a unpredictable slacking in the average wind speed like what happen with the Texas wind farms earlier this year.

 

[Miss Chicken]

My state's electricity is 95% renewable (mainly hydro but some wind power as well). The rest of my country far less so, as Australia is such a dry country that hydroelectricity cannot be a major source of electricity in most states.

However Australians are being encouraged to use solar energy especially for water heating. I think wind power has considerable potential in this country also.

I think that it will be a long time before Australia turns 100% green.

Before the collapse of their economy I would have said Iceland would be the first country to be 100% green (including cars). They still might be the first. Iceland has vast amounts of both hydro and geothermal power that they can harness.

 

[Nowhere Man]

It will take catastrophy as usual. We don't do shit about problems until bad things happen. It will take massive flooding and famine, then finally people will believe in global warming. The Republicans will still try to spin it though. "Well at least thers more beach front property" or something like that.

 

[KJbushway]

Well I personally because of the threat(no matter how safe you can be) think that nuclear reactors should not be listed as green because, those uranium rods have to sit in water for many decades because of the radiation and the possible blow-up threat is dangerous to all life for a lot of decades.
Solar panels are good, one guy is even trying to event a solar panel printer.
Wind mills are good, but when you get the chance you should look up a thing that actually hangs by a cord high in the air and spins creating electricity, its a different kind of windmill.

But I agree its probably going to take a catastrophe to change the minds of the many. Global warming is true and humans do contribute to it, so I think that we need to look at other types of fuel, like mushrooms, algae, and hydrogen. I don't think corn is a viable option.

 

[TerokNor]

My country just turns away of green. Ok, maybe not... but they have decidet for NOT getting out of nuclear energy to the time it was planned, but to keep it for longer.
I also would not count nuclear as green. Sun, wind, water and such are green.
I can´t wait till we can get rid of the government we have at the moment...

TerokNor

 

[KJbushway]

Yeah that does kinda suck, but hopefully once the big Fusion research place gets done in US, maybe the will get it running for a full minute, and then maybe they can perfect in it in a decade or so. that should solve everyones problem, and if the mother of all solar waves come at us whether in 2012 or another time, it could survive it possibly.

 

[T'Girl]

I think that we need to look at other types of fuel, like ...hydrogen. I don't think corn is a viable option.

The thing about hydrogen is that strictly speaking it isn't a "green energy," another form of energy has to be employed to create (separate out) the hydrogen in the first place. If that energy is green then the hydrogen is green, if the energy was dirty then the hydrogen is dirty. Hydrogen is just a way of carrying or storing energy, it isn't a primary source.

The problem with some forms of "bio-fuels" like corn is that they are also in many cases food.

I also would not count nuclear as green.

How isn't nuclear "green."

 

[Holdfast]

This deals with what in your opinion will it take to change your country to start major thinking on green tech...

Green technology will become widespread when it costs roughly the equivalent amount per unit electricity generated as "dirty" technologies. Simple as that.

There of course will be a cross-over period with various competing technologies across the spectrum from very dirty to very clean, and the market being distorted due to various subsidies, trades and exemptions.

However in the final analysis, the real tipping point will be when the cost becomes equal to, or less, than conventional technologies. The rest (the grants, subsidies, trading schemes, etc, etc, etc) should be conceptually considered just R&D expenditure on the technological advances required to make it cheap.

Like all R&D budgets, the amount you set aside depends on your business model, which in this case translates across (in democratic countries) to the political and sociocultural landscape of the country.

In the medium term, avoiding an expansion of fission power will be impossible to avoid in a large number of countries, to maintain a relatively secure and cheap form of power generation. FWIW, though I care infinitely more about the cost and security arguments rather than the environmental ones, I do also think that nuclear is far "greener" than any other practical alternative would be in many countries. In the much longer term, primary power generation is going to have to be fusion, supplemented by smaller amounts of solar/wind/hydroelectric.

If I was in charge of the "green" movement, I would want to throw as much money as possible on fusion to get it developed as fast as possible. That's the real long-term solution that won't handicap the pace of human progress. Everything else is treading water.

 

[KJbushway]

I think that we need to look at other types of fuel, like ...hydrogen. I don't think corn is a viable option.

The thing about hydrogen is that strictly speaking it isn't a "green energy," another form of energy has to be employed to create (separate out) the hydrogen in the first place. If that energy is green then the hydrogen is green, if the energy was dirty then the hydrogen is dirty. Hydrogen is just a way of carrying or storing energy, it isn't a primary source.

The problem with some forms of "bio-fuels" like corn is that they are also in many cases food.

I also would not count nuclear as green.

How isn't nuclear "green."

I wrote why Nuclear isn't considered green above.
I agree that corn isn't a viable source of bio-fuel, but I listed above other kinds of bio-fuels that are being researched now. I don't have any links sorry, its on of those things you read in passing and don't save.
Have you ever seen what a hydrogen engine looks like, and what simple process there is to get it working. Your right about fusion, that does take a lot more stuff to get it running but its still not a dangerous as nuclear and its cost effective, but that energy is a ways away, but its a viable option for green energy.

 

[KJbushway]

This deals with what in your opinion will it take to change your country to start major thinking on green tech...

Green technology will become widespread when it costs roughly the equivalent amount per unit electricity generated as "dirty" technologies. Simple as that.

There of course will be a cross-over period with various competing technologies across the spectrum from very dirty to very clean, and the market being distorted due to various subsidies, trades and exemptions.

However in the final analysis, the real tipping point will be when the cost becomes equal to, or less, than conventional technologies. The rest (the grants, subsidies, trading schemes, etc, etc, etc) should be conceptually considered just R&D expenditure on the technological advances required to make it cheap.

Like all R&D budgets, the amount you set aside depends on your business model, which in this case translates across (in democratic countries) to the political and sociocultural landscape of the country.

In the medium term, avoiding an expansion of fission power will be impossible to avoid in a large number of countries, to maintain a relatively secure and cheap form of power generation. FWIW, though I care infinitely more about the cost and security arguments rather than the environmental ones, I do also think that nuclear is far "greener" than any other practical alternative would be in many countries. In the much longer term, primary power generation is going to have to be fusion, supplemented by smaller amounts of solar/wind/hydroelectric.

If I was in charge of the "green" movement, I would want to throw as much money as possible on fusion to get it developed as fast as possible. That's the real long-term solution that won't handicap the pace of human progress. Everything else is treading water.

Your right, it can be considered greener than coal, but by itself its not green at all. Its those safety concerns that make it not green, its all those materials, most non-renewable that make it not green.

 

[Listener4]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

 

[KJbushway]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

Please don't spread that Global Warming has been exposed as a hoax bullshit. Show me one well known climate scientist, show me a poll where the majority of scientist actually believe that humans don't make global warming worse. If you got that crap from wikipedia, I'll understand. Oh and global warming is true, if it wasn't none of us would be here. You meant the part that Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell believe in, that humans don't make it worse.

Just so people get the real truth:
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/quiz-global-warming.html?source=sem_G2300c_ESV&esvcid=S1289006467_ADOGOC_AGI3831024_ADI5424888_TRMZ2xvYmFsJTIwd2FybWluZyUyMGZhY3Q%3d_RFDZ2xvYmFsd2FybWluZy1mYWN0cy5pbmZv&utm_source=google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_term=global%20warming%20fact&utm_content=S1289006467_ADOGOC_AGI3831024_ADI5424888_TRMZ2xvYmFsJTIwd2FybWluZyUyMGZhY3Q%3d_RFDZ2xvYmFsd2FybWluZy1mYWN0cy5pbmZv&utm_campaign=Environment-+Content&gclid=CLSD6aSDi6UCFate7AodUi8GNQ
(just answer the first question on the quiz.)
http://globalwarming-facts.info/
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=54192
http://globalwarming.sdsu.edu/

When I looked for Global Warming Hoax, it was mostly blogs with no scientific back-up run by guess what
Republians.
I need not to say more.

 

[Holdfast]

Your right, it can be considered greener than coal, but by itself its not green at all. Its those safety concerns that make it not green, its all those materials, most non-renewable that make it not green.

You have to make compromises in the interests of the current population living pleasant lives.

Nuclear fission is a proven, cost-effective, and reliable power generation medium. It is a fair bit greener than traditional fossil fuels. To maintain energy security and relatively cheap costs of production, coal and nuclear fission are really the only games in town in the medium term and between the two, fission is cleaner. Using fission more also prolongs other fossil fuel reserves (important when considering the many by-products we make from oil especially).

I guess the core point I want to make is this:

Man will always want to technologicallly adapt his environment to suit him. People rightly want a comfortable and easy life. That kind of shaping of our environment to suit our needs/preferences requires vast quanties of energy, and will go on requiring ever-increasing amounts of it.

Energy-efficiency, almost by definition, can't solve the problem. It only reduce its medium term impact by nibbling away at the margins, reducing the rate of rise somewhat. Given the strong likelihood that Far Eastern and South American energy consumption will absolutely explode this century, with Africa following suit next century, even that minor stemming of the rate of rise may well not happen.

Current green technologies can't solve the problem either, being at least one of too inefficient, too inconsistent, or too expensive. They might get better in time, but there are always going to be some serious practical considerations with wind, hydro, tidal and geothermal generation that will likely keep them minor, supplementary, technologies in many countries. Solar is a bit more promising, and if I had to bet on a renewable that's the one I'd choose as having a major long-term role to play.

But nuclear fission can quite easily step into the breach for 50-250 years while the long-term answer of fusion is developed, if it takes that long. The alternative will be - quite literally - the lights going out in 50-75 years time due to increased global energy demand making resources so expensive that power generation becomes sketchy, reducing average quality of life.

No country will easily accept that, so it's either war or nuclear fission. Combining the two options worked out well enough the first time round, but let's try to avoid pushing our luck with an encore.

 

[KJbushway]

Your right, it can be considered greener than coal, but by itself its not green at all. Its those safety concerns that make it not green, its all those materials, most non-renewable that make it not green.

You have to make compromises in the interests of the current population living pleasant lives.


I guess the core point I want to make is this:

Man will always want to technologicallly adapt his environment to suit him. People rightly want a comfortable and easy life. That kind of shaping of our environment to suit our needs/preferences requires vast quanties of energy, and will go on requiring ever-increasing amounts of it.

Energy-efficiency, almost by definition, can't solve the problem. It only reduce its medium term impact by nibbling away at the margins, reducing the rate of rise somewhat. Given the strong likelihood that Far Eastern and South American energy consumption will absolutely explode this century, with Africa following suit next century, even that minor stemming of the rate of rise may well not happen.

Current green technologies can't solve the problem either, being at least one of too inefficient, too inconsistent, or too expensive. They might get better in time, but there are always going to be some serious practical considerations with wind, hydro, tidal and geothermal generation that will likely keep them minor, supplementary, technologies in many countries. Solar is a bit more promising, and if I had to bet on a renewable that's the one I'd choose as having a major long-term role to play.

But nuclear fission can quite easily step into the breach for 50-250 years while the long-term answer of fusion is developed, if it takes that long. The alternative will be - quite literally - the lights going out in 50-75 years time due to increased global energy demand making resources so expensive that power generation becomes sketchy, reducing average quality of life.

No country will easily accept that, so it's either war or nuclear fission. Combining the two options worked out well enough the first time round, but let's try to avoid pushing our luck with an encore.

Your right and I agree with you even though I think its sad that people can't give a little bit of their comfortable lives up so their children can have a Earth in the future. But lets think, people out there can actually take themselves off the power-grid with just the green technology they have in their house, maybe that is a viable option along with spreading that knowledge to lesser countries. If you look at my green house forum, you can see that if I were to have that house that I described one day, I could take myself off the powergrid, water pipes. Yet, I could live a very comfortable life style, with hardly any hurts to the enviroment.

 

[T'Girl]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

Please don't spread that Global Warming has been exposed as a hoax ...

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has faced considerable criticism ever since questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigor with which climate change claims are assessed.

Objective measurements does show that world wide temperature has increased by eight tenths of one degree celsius over the past one hundred and ten years. The climate is changing. Whether you believe it's natural, natural exacerbated by humans or primarily cause by humans, it does seem that proponents of human caused climate change are shooting themselves in the foot by over stating the predicted effects.

I don't believe in the philosophy of "shocking" the populace in to motion through exaggeration, it can come back to sting you, which is exactly what happen earlier this year.

As a consequence, when the same scientists make recommendation as to actions that world governments should undertake to mitigate the effects of climate change, fewer governments take these recommendations seriously.

 

[scotpens]

It will take catastrophy as usual. We don't do shit about problems until bad things happen. It will take massive flooding and famine, then finally people will believe in global warming.

Oh, you mean like the massive global famine in the 1970s, predicted by Paul Ehrlich in The Population Bomb (1968)?

Objective measurements does show that world wide temperature has increased by eight tenths of one degree celsius over the past one hundred and ten years. The climate is changing. Whether you believe it's natural, natural exacerbated by humans or primarily caused by humans, it does seem that proponents of human caused climate change are shooting themselves in the foot by over stating the predicted effects.

Exactly. Reducing our dependence on non-renewable fossil fuels is a good, common-sense idea. Gloom-and-doom predictions will only backfire when they turn out to be wrong (as they inevitably do).

 

[Nowhere Man]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

Please don't spread that Global Warming has been exposed as a hoax bullshit. Show me one well known climate scientist, show me a poll where the majority of scientist actually believe that humans don't make global warming worse. If you got that crap from wikipedia, I'll understand. While you maybe smart, that was truly a dumb statement.
Oh and global warming is true, if it wasn't none of us would be here. You meant the part that Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell believe in, that humans don't make it worse.

Just so people get the real truth:
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/
http://environment.nationalgeograph...ent-+Content&gclid=CLSD6aSDi6UCFate7AodUi8GNQ
(just answer the first question on the quiz.)
http://globalwarming-facts.info/
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=54192
http://globalwarming.sdsu.edu/

When I looked for Global Warming Hoax, it was mostly blogs with no scientific back-up run by guess what
Republians.
I need not to say more.

I prefer to call it global climate change which is in part due to warming. I think people sort of get confused of the issue. Like you said, if there was no global warming, then we could not live on this planet. The Ozone layer provides us as a "heating blanket" so that when the sun goes down at night, we don't freeze to death. The Ozone lay also provides a filter. When sunlight enters the atmosphere it has to go through several layers. The ozone bieng the most important. The carbon gets traped their, while some escapes. The heat on the surface gets released back into the ozone at nigh creating a cycle. Heat reaches the surface, heat from surface goes bach into ozone. Thus the blanket effect. It is natural for the climate to change due to sun spots, sun storms and rotation and revolution of the Earth. Valcanic activity and plate tectonics also contribute. This is why we have ice ages. What is not natural is when large amounts of carbon is pumped into the atmosphere from burning of fosil fuels. This is what we do. It burns a hole in the ozone layer, creating greenhouse gases to leak out onto the surface. Thus warming the planet at a faster rate than it would be under natural condition. Evedence of this is melting ice caps and loss of whole insect populations and animal migration. The reason we know that releasing of carbon is bad because carbon is trapped sunlight or energy, which is essentally dinosours. The only other natural forces that could cause this is as I said,massive valcanic activity or a meteor strike. This would release enough carbon to block out the sun and trigger an ice age. We are not doing that, we are releasing enough carbon to trigger massive flooding and increased sea levels and massive drought. It also messes up the jet stream which causes shorter winters and longer summers or vice versa like the big snow storms we had on the east coast last winter. Hopefully that will help clear up the confusion.

 

[KJbushway]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

Please don't spread that Global Warming has been exposed as a hoax bullshit. Show me one well known climate scientist, show me a poll where the majority of scientist actually believe that humans don't make global warming worse. If you got that crap from wikipedia, I'll understand. Oh and global warming is true, if it wasn't none of us would be here. You meant the part that Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell believe in, that humans don't make it worse.

Just so people get the real truth:
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/
http://environment.nationalgeograph...ent-+Content&gclid=CLSD6aSDi6UCFate7AodUi8GNQ
(just answer the first question on the quiz.)
http://globalwarming-facts.info/
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=54192
http://globalwarming.sdsu.edu/

When I looked for Global Warming Hoax, it was mostly blogs with no scientific back-up run by guess what
Republians.
I need not to say more.

Sorry Listener, I came on a little strong. My aggression wasn't toward you it was toward the subjet. Its one of those topics that can easily upset.

 

[KJbushway]

I'm not sure how much of a future the green movement has. Even though global warming has been exposed as hoax, I'm sure it will go down kicking and screaming and be around for some time still.

Please don't spread that Global Warming has been exposed as a hoax bullshit. Show me one well known climate scientist, show me a poll where the majority of scientist actually believe that humans don't make global warming worse. If you got that crap from wikipedia, I'll understand. While you maybe smart, that was truly a dumb statement.
Oh and global warming is true, if it wasn't none of us would be here. You meant the part that Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell believe in, that humans don't make it worse.

Just so people get the real truth:
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/
http://environment.nationalgeograph...ent-+Content&gclid=CLSD6aSDi6UCFate7AodUi8GNQ
(just answer the first question on the quiz.)
http://globalwarming-facts.info/
http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagid=54192
http://globalwarming.sdsu.edu/

When I looked for Global Warming Hoax, it was mostly blogs with no scientific back-up run by guess what
Republians.
I need not to say more.

I prefer to call it global climate change which is in part due to warming. I think people sort of get confused of the issue. Like you said, if there was no global warming, then we could not live on this planet. The Ozone layer provides us as a "heating blanket" so that when the sun goes down at night, we don't freeze to death. The Ozone lay also provides a filter. When sunlight enters the atmosphere it has to go through several layers. The ozone bieng the most important. The carbon gets traped their, while some escapes. The heat on the surface gets released back into the ozone at nigh creating a cycle. Heat reaches the surface, heat from surface goes bach into ozone. Thus the blanket effect. It is natural for the climate to change due to sun spots, sun storms and rotation and revolution of the Earth. Valcanic activity and plate tectonics also contribute. This is why we have ice ages. What is not natural is when large amounts of carbon is pumped into the atmosphere from burning of fosil fuels. This is what we do. It burns a hole in the ozone layer, creating greenhouse gases to leak out onto the surface. Thus warming the planet at a faster rate than it would be under natural condition. Evedence of this is melting ice caps and loss of whole insect populations and animal migration. The reason we know that releasing of carbon is bad because carbon is trapped sunlight or energy, which is essentally dinosours. The only other natural forces that could cause this is as I said,massive valcanic activity or a meteor strike. This would release enough carbon to block out the sun and trigger an ice age. We are not doing that, we are releasing enough carbon to trigger massive flooding and increased sea levels and massive drought. It also messes up the jet stream which causes shorter winters and longer summers or vice versa like the big snow storms we had on the east coast last winter. Hopefully that will help clear up the confusion.

Agreed, But my main theme was that you can't spread lies like that because they are dangerous. What you said is the truth, even the scientist who had e-mails come out which some of these conspiracy theorists caught, stated what those e-mails were about. It wasn't that they doubt non-natural warming, it was about some of the measurements they had. One example of too much carbon and heating gases it right next to us, our sister planet Venus.