"The melting of Greenland glaciers and Arctic Ocean sea ice this past summer reached levels not seen in decades, scientists reported. "
"This year's summertime melt, which provides more evidence of recent quick warming in the Arctic, is in part driven by natural climate oscillations, the researchers said. But they added that human-driven changes to the environment like the destruction of ozone and the emission of carbon dioxide could well have accelerated and enlarged the effect."
The Good News is that Oil Production and Consumption are up, while prices remain low.
ed. UBB
[ edited by Borillar on Dec 7, 2002 11:42 PM ]
posted on December 8, 2002 07:09:23 AM new
Good news on the oil prices, although gas here is still at around $1.50. There was a small reprieve at Thanksgiving, but after the holiday they shot back up.
Bad news on the Arctic melt. We don't have to worry about melting here in northeast Ohio. Canada sends us enough Arctic blasts to keep us in the deep freeze and Lake Erie has been brewing up the lake effect snow since before Thanksgiving. Temperatures have been colder than normal and we've had higher than normal amounts of snowfall. This weekend we're out of the 20's and teens for the first time in a couple of weeks. Feels like a heat wave!
Are they predicting any future disasters in the Arctic due to the melting? I'm still undecided on the global warming issue - could go either way. So, convince me!
posted on December 8, 2002 12:12:03 PM new
Ah, who cares Borillar? People don't want to fix things that interfere with convenience, no matter what it does to the earth. Get real!
posted on December 8, 2002 12:25:01 PM new
And let's not forget making a profit! Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on December 8, 2002 01:44:41 PM new
Seeing as how lowlands, like Florida, will dissappear first, I wonder how Jeb Bush will talk his way out of that one.
In the meantime, Pat Robertson is still in denial that Global Warming exists.
posted on December 8, 2002 02:03:51 PM new
Even General Motors, arguably the world's biggest global warmer, admits that there is enough evidence for global warming that it is time to take action, of course, they don't want the government to do it...
Regarding the price of gas, it seems that Americans believe they have a GOD GIVEN RIGHT to cheap fuel. As long as this silly attitude persists, the planet will keep on getting hotter...Don't get me wrong, it's very painful to fill up a truck that has a 46 gallon gas tank these days,and I can't afford it any more than the next person...but look at it another way..what other liquid that you normally buy can be had for less than 2 bucks a gallon?? Milk? nope, shampoo?, no way, paint ? how about beer?...there's the real tragedy...BEER costs more than gasoline!!!
posted on December 8, 2002 02:49:50 PM new
That the Earth is going through a warming phase right now is only dismissed by idiots, like Pat Robertson (because it's SCIENCE!) and Jerry Falwell and Bush. That PEOPLE have anything to do with making it happen, or are a causal effect, the science just isn't complete enough just yet. For every question answered by science in this problem of Global Warming, ten more are still being researched without a csolid conclusion.
As far a fuel/oil goes, most other coutries where fuel is so high a cost is because that is how their country's taxes are structured. Ours are structured differently. Without taxes whatsoever, the cost of a gallon of gas is pretty much the same throughout the world. After all, what are they (OPEC) going to do? Sell us a barrel price at the current market rate, but then tell Germany that it has to buy them at five times as much? They pay the same per barrel of oil that we do, the difference is also whether or not they do their own refining.
posted on December 8, 2002 03:01:51 PM new
I will take some of the blame "after" the following Companys:
Airlines,Nasa,trucking,railways,coal,fuels, plastics,cleaners,power plants,factories,rubber,etc. The whole combo is at fault,and of course all of us.
I only see us being at fault,Why is that?
Hell! I'd use buttermilk in the tank, if it would work.
posted on December 9, 2002 11:11:22 AM new
I read a Popular Mechanics article back in the late 70's that was discussing how to tweak your engine compresion to run effectively on natural alchohol, like farm machinery can. It doesn't have the power punch that gasoline does, so that was why to raise the compression. It is far more clean burning and it is an endlessly renewable resource. The folks in the artilce were even selling conversion kits.
Even if alchohol is such a dud, at least it is clean and cheaper than petrolium to mass produce. No Oil Spills to worry about, no alcohol embarrgo, no Bush Empire, much more clean burning ~ enviromentally friendly. What a thought!
posted on December 9, 2002 11:20:12 AM new
And with a tube running from the alcohol tank to the interior, you could have a cocktail lounge in the back seat.
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We call them our heroes...but we pay them like chumps
posted on December 9, 2002 03:52:47 PM new
Alcohol is not the cure all it would seem. It does burn clean, VERY clean, but it is signifigantly less powerful so more is needed to equal a given volume of gasoline or diesel fuel.
In an internal combustion engine, it is nearly impossible to get it to fire on a cold day. Alcohol conversions for cars in cold climates usually use dual fuel systems, gas to start and get to operating temperature, alcohol to run on once warm. Even race cars that are MADE to run on alcohol are usually started cold with a shot of starting fluid from a can .
The cost of alcohol is high- far higher than gasoline from crude - the alcohol used in gasohol around the country benefits from a massive federal subsidy to make it affordable, without it, the whole program would collapse.
The economic impracticality is one reason only one nation in the world, Brazil, has pursued alcohol as motor fuel in a big way. It's warm almost everywhere, their fuel needs are modest (as compared to the US) and they have massive amounts of biomaterials available from the Amazon Basin to convert WITHOUT the expense of cultivation. Even with those advantages, their motor fuel alcohol is considerably more costly than gas from crude would be- but they are on their way to domestic self sufficiency in motor fuels with huge benefits to their balance of payments and their economy.
This program works only because the Brazilian Government mandated cars be able to run on alcohol, phased in over several years as the auto fleet turned over. Now the new ones run on straight alcohol.
The US government wont even raise CAFE standards, you think they'll mandate ALL new cars that are less powerful, smaller and run on a fuel that costs twice as much? Not if they want to get reelected, they won't.
In the US, crude would need to be at $55 a barrel to cost the same as alcohol for motor fuel. If world crude gets to that level with reason to believe it will stay there for a while, look for massive new amounts of crude to be discovered, not just overseas but right here in the US. Domestic production from EXISTING sites would soar, the higher price justifying improved recovery and new drilling on old sites. It would also cause the development of sites known to contain oil but not currently producing because of high costs.
One might argue that a oil high price would spur construction of more alcohol plants but only the government would do that- the big energy companies have been stung once with huge alternative energy spending, the oil shale projects out west, only to see the
world oil price collapse leaving them some very expensive holes in the ground.
The best chance to anything approaching energy independence is a combination of efforts, the most important being USING LESS. Utilization of solar and other renewable sources, wind, biomass and small scale piped hydro can also play a role along with more research into clean burning of coal- something we have plenty of.
posted on December 9, 2002 04:43:07 PM new
Just wondering, do we need arctic ice for anything?
If the melting created an overflow of water, do you suppose it would cause a cooling of the atmosphere bringing the earth's temperature back down and refreezing those iceburgs? There's no doubt in my mind this is not a cause for an alarm.
posted on December 9, 2002 06:04:34 PM new
You live in a little world of your very own, don't you quickdraw?
.................................................
We call them our heroes...but we pay them like chumps
posted on December 9, 2002 06:24:32 PM new
>Just wondering, do we need arctic ice for anything?
Yes.
Imagine sea levels rising 300 feet. Heck, imagine just 10 feet and most of Florida will dissappear underneath the ocean!
Also, right now, the cooling does play into a very involved set of physics that depend upon the temperatue of the oceans to the air to keep what we have in balance. Paleo-Geologists have found very disturbing past history when the weather patterns have been so disturbed. Theoretically, with the mass of ice removed and redistributed as water around the globe, the magnetic fields could shift and worse - even the actual poles could shift!
posted on December 9, 2002 07:01:49 PM new
Bob, you are very right in your comparison of today's standards. However, I think that if we could get into the act of serious alchohol for fuel production it would end up costing less than gasoline does. Right now, we put a GIANT effort on the processing of oil - a diminishing and hard to find resource that, when you see what all is involved in extracting it, transporting it, procesing it, and then marketing it, its much, much more effort than would be needed to make commerical-grade fuel from alchohol.
I also mentioned that the engine compression would have to be changed to make up for the lack of power from alchohol. After all, engines are tuned with gasoline in mind and are optimized for the greatest efficiency from gasoline, not alchohol. Instead, redesign the engine to effectively burn high-grade alchohol to solve the power problem.
Admittedly, colder climates may have to use starter fluids. But once an engine is going and gets warmed up, no reason that it couldn't switch to alchohol instead of gasoline. I mean, it isn't rocket science to make a mechanical switch and with computerization onboard, knowing when to make the switch is simplicity in itself.
The bottom line is that right now, with gasoline so cheap, alternative fuels are costly - at first, by comparison. But when your city goes under water from melting ice caps, you might think that alternative fuels are cheap in the long run. What it needs is a leader with a vision who is willing to get the job done.
posted on December 9, 2002 08:41:38 PM new
Exactly right! Profe51
I was reading an article about the use of hydrogen today and it seemed so perfect...never runs out, produces no harmful CO2 emissions when burned...only byproducts are heat and pure water etc. It was called the forever fuel.
"Energy would be available in every community of the world...hydrogen exists everywhere on earth, empowering the whole of the human race. By creating an energy regime that is decentralized and potentially universally accessible to everyone, we establish the technological framework for creating a more participatory and sustainable economic life - one that is compatible with the principle of democratic participation in our political life. Making the commercial and political arenas seamless, however will require a human struggle of truly epic proportions in the coming decades. What is in doubt is not the technological know how to make it happen but, rather, the collective human will, determination and resolve to transform the great hope of hydrogen into a democratic reality."
Is that an understatement or what???
The article is in the Dec.23 issue of The Nation...It may not be on the internet yet.
The title is Hydrogen: Empowering the People by Jeremy Rifkin.
posted on December 9, 2002 11:18:49 PM new
Borillar,
The technological aspects of reconfiguring automobiles to run on alcohol, while difficult, are solvable. The cars will be more problematic, more costly, and in the event of a severe crash, more dangerous. Likewise the infrastructure of distribution and sales can be addressed although at a cost- even if you eliminated petro based gasoline, the volume of alcohol required will necessitate more facilities because of the lack of power and the greater volumes therefore necessary to do the same work.
It's the economic issues that make alcohol an unlikely replacement for gasoline. If crude goes to $50 and gasoline to a price corresponding to that raw material cost, perhaps $3.00 a gallon, the cost of alcohol escalates as well. Unlike Brazil where alcohol is made from wastes and tropical plantstock (seeded but untended) the feedstock for American made alcohol for fuel is corn.
To grow the corn requires vast amounts of
energy in the form of diesel fuel and gasoline, to plant it, to tend it,
to harvest it, to move it to
market and finally convert it. It is ironic that low cost petro energy is so essential to the production of its competition but if the base fuel goes up- so must the manufactured fuel that it goes towards. Even at a huge scale, the production of alcohol is energy intensive, so much so that many question whether there is a net gain in the process. It must not be a large gain or the production of alcohol for fuel would be a thriving free market industry
not needing a government subsidy - but it isn't. It will continue because taking away those multibillion dollar subsidies would lose votes in the farm states, but it's future , barring some major technological breakthrough, is rather more likely continuing the subsidy without expanding the program.
Hydrogen holds some promise, but again, the cost of extracting it "from all around us" is high. Using electrolysis to extract it requires electricity, and even if as Rifkin suggests this is provided by wind , solar or geothermal, the question has to be not what the COST of that used energy is, but the VALUE.
The value must be deducted from the value
of the hydrogen to get a real picture of cost. While his vision addresses the issue of availability of hydrogen, it skims right over the issue of cost, both of the energy consumed in extracting it and the cumbersome and costly equipment to process, store and contain it. Like any flammable gas it has to be kept ABSOLUTELY free of oxygen- even a small amount compounds 2 of the 3 elements of combustion and if you have compressed it for storage and not blown yourself up in the process - you are sitting on a bomb- a bomb of unbelievable force. He foresees little villages thruout the 3rd world with their own little power plants, enjoying the benefits of electricity. I foresee news stories of villages disappearing in fireballs. He also doesn't address the question of where the clean water is going to come from, most of the world's population doesn't have any. Perhaps he envisions including water purification plants in the package of equipment- add another 5 or 10 grand. Again I say it, if wishes were horses, than beggers would ride.
No, I suspect we will still depend on our grid systems for electricity and some transportation as electric cars continue to improve. Their application is limited at the current level of technology but will no doubt improve in the years to come. California's insistence on major manufacturers developing zero emission cars is a great impetus in this direction. However, electric cars only real contribution is in making it unnecessary for their fuel to be easily stored and in transferring fuel and emission concerns to a central power plant where they can be more carefully addressed.
Those central power plants and most of our vehicles still need fuel- where do we get it? Probably from converting coal, oil shale or tar sands into a usable liquid form. If crude goes to $50 a barrel it will pay to spend the billions for infrastructure to create these fuels that can then be fed right into existing distribution channels and those expensive holes will have value again.
The processes to do these conversions are well known and being refined every day- oil made at South Africa's SASOL coal to oil facility is actually better than the best crudes for fuel purposes- in rearranging molecules they are able to structure the "crude" for optimal yield of a given product and remove unwanted components such as sulphur.
Of course, in the US we won't do it until we
hit a crisis and the Government pays to develop the whole thing for the oil companies. But that's another story.
posted on December 10, 2002 12:45:42 AM new
Thanks, Bob. I can see where more alchohol is consumed to create the total amount of energy as compared to gasoline. So you fill up your tank more often. Since alhohol is less flamable than gasoline and less power-packed, I can not see it as being more hazardous than gasoline - an admitttedly more powerful and volitile substance. Keeping the motor lubricated would be a problem, but you'd never suffer from laquer build-up, thereby keeping the costs down. And less emmission control parts, as alchohol burns a LOT cleaner than gasoline does, so better mileage to begin with, lower maintainace costs due to less parts, less complications etc. Creating wood alchohol is fairly easy compared to the expense and technology needed to extract, safely transport, and refine oil into gasoline. It doesn't take rocket scinece to make your own alchohol, although highly refined alchohol suitable for combustion might be an added cost. Bob, I'd say that no real serious concideration has been given to alchohol replacement. Sure, lots of studies have been done, most favor continued reliance on gasoline. However, no report has stated whether it would be a good fuel source if you're living under water from the polar ice caps melting.
posted on December 10, 2002 07:10:07 AM new
Borillar,
Note that I said more dangerous in the event of a severe crash. Larger volumes carried to compensate for lower mileage presents a greater risk of fire in the event of major impact and it burns for the most part without visible flame presenting a greater hazard to rescue workers. I understand that this is the rare event but it bears mentioning.
Profe,
What is the source , what is the cost of the hydrogen used? If it's commercially produced hydrogen it's from natural gas and doesn't solve any problems - LNG could just as easily be run in the vehicles in question
with a relatively simple conversion kit. Our local gas company runs ALL its cars and light trucks on LNG- but strips the conversions out before they sell them because of liability concerns.
The viability of hydrogen powered vehicles is not in question- its the source/cost of the fuel/
posted on December 10, 2002 02:19:36 PM new
Sadly, it will always come down to short term costs, because that's how we do things in the US...that which is not quickly profitable is discarded as "not cost efficient"... we have become so spoiled that only a true disaster wakes this country up...so maybe the best thing is to make gasoline so cheap that we'll run out of it real quick, and then maybe it will become "cost efficient" to look seriously into other alternatives to oil.
.....speaking of costs, what do you suppose would be the cost of 300 vertical feet of coastline...worldwide?
posted on December 10, 2002 02:43:17 PM new
If arctic ice is melting at record levels, how do we know it will continue melting?
When something happens at a record level, it generally reaches it peak, or extreme, then falls back into its medium range. With all the variables involved, this is just a random ocurrance and will go back to its norm.
Blaming it on pollution is just looking for something to blame it on. The damaging effects of volcano's are worse than the pollution man creates yet volcano's have been around for centuries along with the earth in harmony.
I just love when the Doomsdayers freek out to the littlest bit of news. If you can't spend an extra hour getting your facts straight, don't start reading the news in the first place.
posted on December 10, 2002 03:27:54 PM new
Yes things tend to reach a peak and fall back. However many natural systems will also reach a point where they undergo rapid changes of state.
We really don't have much historical data over wide areas of the earth to know what caused certain cusps of instability. Large areas have suddenaly become desert or even shifted from temperate to arctic in days. Why are there Mammoths frozen in the arctic with their last meal hanging in their teeth? It didn't matter when it happened then because there were no big cities or human settlements there at the time as far as we know.
If we experience such wild climate shifts today with a global economy it will be different.
Assuming that a system (our weather) will only continue to make small changes from year to year may be a bad bet. Not so much in the sense it is probable - but from the view it is a bet you can't afford to lose - a bet the farm risk. I would never consider buying property and living near a coast.
[ edited by gravid on Dec 10, 2002 03:51 PM ]
posted on December 10, 2002 03:36:08 PM new
profe- I absolutely agree.
Where we missed the chance was during the oil price collapse of the mid 80's- if we had slapped an oil import tax equal to the drop in world oil prices we would have continued the move to greater efficiency in energy use that was underway. Without it, we all got a short term break on prices but we also forgot about using less- and now we are back in the position we were prior to 73- subject to oil blackmail.
An Investment Tax Credit for energy research might help, but I think the ITC that homeowners and landlords had for insulation, new furnaces etc to encourage conservation should be restored as well. Finally, how about an ITC for buying an efficient New Car based on the level above CAFE minimums that the model you choose gets? Kind of a reverse gas guzzler tax in the form of a tax credit. If you also apply it only to models built in the US you get the Auto Industry at least lukewarm to it and Labor behind it 100%.
posted on December 10, 2002 05:51:55 PM newThe damaging effects of volcano's are worse than the pollution man creates yet volcano's have been around for centuries along with the earth in harmony.
THAT'S IT!!!!! quickdraw is REAGAN, alzhimer's and all !!!!!
Reagan paraded that little factoid out early in his reign and was quickly dis-proved and shown to be idiot. Never spoke of it again.
Didn't YOU get the memo?
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We call them our heroes...but we pay them like chumps
[ edited by mlecher on Dec 10, 2002 05:54 PM ]
