The Climate Challenge

[technomage]

Hi People

I found an excellent website on climate change a few days ago

http://www.climatechallenge.gov.uk

It's UK based but the information there would be usefull to anyone. They have also produced some short films on climate change (some of you in the UK would have seen these on TV)

Defra climate change short film

This two minute film is designed to illustrate why climate change is happening, what it will mean and also to inspire people to be part of the solution.

High Bandwidth

Low Bandwidth

I have commited to saving 20% of my energy usage. I am hoping that others on this forum will do the same (if you haven't done so already).

[dmantione]

I sometimes wish the computer industry would help us a bit... Modern cpu's, video cards need a lot of power. One can argue wether we need such things, but what about:

* They are making computer cases that draw power when switched off. Not only their power supplies remain active, modern computers keep even the USB and PS/2 devices powered.
* Modern LCD monitors have external power supplies, which draw power when the monitor is switched off and are eliminating the power advantage of LCD by using extra bright lamps.
* Printers nowadays come without power switch.

The above is pure waste, gaining us nothing.

[Nitrogen]

A comment posted on Slashdot intrigued me.
The poster said that he bought a current measuring device and tested all the power outlets in his home.

His PCs power consumption was NOTHING compared to things like the clothes drying machine, washing machine, heaters, and even lights in each room, especially fixtures with multiple lights, they are the REAL energy eaters.

[Robert Kosek]

"Global Warming", "Climate Change"... we only have some 150 years of recorded weather history. 50 years ago everyone was afraid of a "Global Ice Age"! Maybe it's all just part of a natural temperature cycle on the Earth?

Even if the globe heats... who bloody well cares? More heat makes more evaporation, and precipitation/cloud-cover leads to lower temperature. The globe is self-balancing, evidently.


Though what Nitrogen said is true; the computers these days are the least of our worries. Other utilities within our houses draw a lot more power than my 430Watt powersupply does. And I even turn the whole thing off at night, unlike the dishwasher, clothes washer/dryer, etc.

[dmantione]

You have to wash so much clothes that it needs to run 24 hours a day?! :shock: A washing machine can indeed easily pull 3000 watts, but it only does that for a very short time, as soon as the water is heated, it doesn't draw much power any more.

In general heaters consume an awfull lot of power. For example cooking on gas is a much better idea than cooking on electricity.

However, power consumption has increased a lot during the last decade. Computers are widely blamed for it.

[Robert Kosek]

You have to wash so much clothes that it needs to run 24 hours a day?! :shock: A washing machine can indeed easily pull 3000 watts, but it only does that for a very short time, as soon as the water is heated, it doesn't draw much power any more.

Uh, no I don't. But if it's running I leave it on. Though I don't typically wash or dry clothes at night!

Computers are blamed for the rise in power consumption, but they aren't making more powerplants either. A nuclear powerplant would solve all California's power problems, but it's illegal to build powerplants there! Morons. It's primarily the cooling costs that are problematic out there.

[technomage]

Wether you believe in global warning or not, I still think that everyone has a responsibility to to "their bit" to keep this planet in one piece. After all for now it's the only one we have.

I would suggest that people watch An Inconvient Truth if you want to see what effect The Industrial Revolution has had on the planet.

My house had no heading for 2 years and we had to run electric heaters in that time. I have in the last 6 month put in gas central heating and cavity wall insulation and switched to low power light bulbs and cut my energy consumption by about 80% :!:

Most people don't need to make big changes to make a difference, replacing your light bulbs with energy savers is a good start, not only will they last longer but they use 1/3 less energy. and you don't have to do it all at once, just one a month.

The globe is self-balancing, evidently.

The globe is self-balancing, which is great if you live in an area where you are well above sea level. I good example of the globe balancing itself is if the ice sheet in green land melts (because of the higher temperature) and floats into the north sea it will probably stop the gulf stream which keeps the vast majority of northern europe warm. The end result would be an ice age in europe, which will problably help bring the global temperature down. That's cool if you live in,say the US or Asia, but it doesn't really help the millions of people in europe.

There are also tempature records going back further that 150 years, ice core's taking in the Artic and Antartic can be used to find out the kind of temperatures that were present when the ice was formed. Again the An Inconvient Truth covers allot of this, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to find out more.

[dmantione]

Yes, I have some diagrams about the reconstructed past temperatures. We are currently in a warm period in the history of the planet. A temperature increase of a few degrees still won't give us abnormal temperatures, prehistorically seen. However, the temperature is increasing at a much faster rate than ever before. Past temperatures changes have resulted in major destructions in ecosystems, allthough the planet has always been able to recover given time.

[Robert Kosek]

No offense meant Dean, but anything put forth by Al Gore and Hollywood gets immediate skepticism from me. Gore is no scientist, nor is Hollywood out for the betterment of society: just check their rather brutal lockdown on "intellectual property" and restrictions in movie usage.

I'm not saying that we should be careless, far from it. Just careful of everyone crying wolf just like they have before. We should be good stewards and care for the planet so it is around for both us and our subsequent generations. I dispute with Gore upon the matter of his 'evidence' though.

There are also tempature records going back further that 150 years, ice core's taking in the Artic and Antartic can be used to find out the kind of temperatures that were present when the ice was formed.

Using ice cores is inaccurate. 1: You assume the rate of build up was constant. 2: You assume melting and refreezing was constant. 3: We are unable to witness the entire period that the layers formed within, so we cannot judge the amount of time, temperature, or "kind" of climate involved. The ice in northern and southern regions has been found to accumulate in wildly varying rates, from inches in a year, to many smaller layers. The outright assertion that "we can measure temperature way back", like Gore claims, is completely inaccurate: we can't.

This is like the assertion that the Colorado River formed the Grand Canyon slowly over millions of years. I quote from the National Park online document about the Grand Canyon:

How old is the canyon itself? The early history and evolution of the Colorado River (of which Grand Canyon is only a part) is the most complex aspect of Grand Canyon geology. We know that the erosion which has shaped the canyon has occurred only in the past five to six million years. This is only yesterday, considering the age of the rocks through which the river has carved.

No one bothers to look at the land from the side like we can in satellite photography (height measurements, or by surveying) and see that the water ran uphill through a relative mountain range (though it is long and wide, rather than tall and sharp; it is no less significant). Were you to study the Canyon in a macro sense and compared it to a dike or dam that had sprung a leak that began to cut through the sediment, you would find they are nearly identical. Never mind the fact that there is evidence of one to two huge lakes, that existed before the canyon did, running up into Utah and through a good portion of the Rockies. Were they to have raised enough to "trickle" over the dam, the long "hill" the canyon cuts through, it would carve the whole thing in a matter of days. Just look a Spirit Lake at Mount Saint Helens for an example of just what could happen and how swiftly it could act.

Yeah, same scientists. Sorry if I'm a cynic, but they are hardly credible in my eyes. If you're interested I could potentially go on for pages, but no one wants to listen because I, and others, will set the world on its ear if they do. Again, this wasn't meant as a personal attack upon you, but rather against the data you have quoted since it is quite inaccurate.

[cragwolf]

Click on these images to find more images on that topic:



Note the "noisiness" of the data.



Humans may annually produce very little CO2 compare to natural sources (e.g. forest fires, volcanoes), but the cumulative effect of human activity over the past two centuries seems to have raised the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere by a significant amount. That's got to be a cause for concern.



I find it amazing that just 14,000 years ago (or 8,000 years before God created the universe ), the sea level was a whopping 100 metres less than it is now. Wow!



That's a stunningly rapid change. Some people call mountain glaciers the "canaries" of climate change.



The Sun exhibits quite a bit of variability, too.