What Caused Global Warming Before The Industrial Revolution?

[fastdogbrewing]

Many of the Global Warming crowd are also Anti-Nuke...

Says who?

I think it was Rush who said that about them. Could be wrong, listening to that guy makes me want to kill kittens.

Anybody who's educated on the subject knows that our future energy needs will only be solved through a combination of technologies - there is no silver bullet. Where wind power makes sense, use wind. Where solar power makes sense, use that. Where nuclear will work, go for it. This is axiomatic.

This is my problem with many people I have come across who think they know the answer to all the problems. They are so narrow in their focus they can not see past their preffered solution. Maybe it's being an engineer but to me coming to a solution after reading an ad in a newspaper or listening to a pundit is like deciding that jumping off a cliff is a good idea because you never saw the guy before you hit the ground.

The transportation issue is a perfect example of this. All you hear is new hybrid cars, new electric cars, and new ethanol compatible cars. Noone seems to be interested in coming up with a solution to the existing vehicle fleet in this country. So narrow in the focus. As an example, when my wife's Grand Cherokee starting acting up I really wanted to pull the engine and put in a small diesel that I could run BioDiesel in it. So I did the research and I could get a small Cummins diesel that would fit in the Grand. Would run BioD great. Found a few people online who did it and they were getting 30+ MPG in lifted 4WD versions. Wif'es Grand was 2WD. So would be able to go from 18MPG to 30MPG running a domestically produceable bio fuel that is high on the renewable chart and low on the emissions contribution chart.

Bad news though, this improvement is completely illegal. Basically the attitude I got(which really didn't surprise me) from the guy at CARB I talked to was HOW DARE you want to improve your car.

Another example. How many people know there is a company near San Diego that makes Natural Gas conversion kits for many modern cars? They are simple kits and have been proved VERY reliable, in South America. Again these kits are illegal. The EPA and CARB want in excess of $100,000 per vehicle model, per year, per engine to certify them. IOW, $100,000 for the Chevy 1500 pickup, and another $100,000 for the GMC 1500 pickup truck, which are the SAME TRUCK. The official response from the EPA is that they need to charge this much and do the testing to protect peoples warranties. WTF??

If you dig into what our "leaders" want to do you start seeing very quickly that they really don't know WTF they are doing or talking about.

France has made nuclear power safer and more efficient (in both economic and technological senses) by standardizing their nuclear infrastructure. All of their plants are essentially identical. And while nuclear power has its virtues, radioactive waste management is far from a trivial subject and is necessarily related to our national security. Non-renewable sources have to go. It's largely about clean and independent sustainability.

I have heard that the plans to increase Nuclear Plants in the country are running into trouble because there are so few Americans who are trained to design them. France kicks ass when it comes to Nuke power, we are probably going to have to spend some money on French specialists to catch up.

All of the new power generation ideas are going to be wasted if we don't fix and upgrade our power grid FIRST. INFRASTRUCTURE!!!!! I don't get why the politicians don't see this. They are spending all this time on bailing out banks and auto companies and developing new trading schemes that have proven to not work, all the while this time and money could go into infrastructure that would create LOTS of jobs and benefit EVERYONE in the long run.

[fastdogbrewing]

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-41050320090715?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=11584&sp=true

""We now believe that the CO2 did not cause all the warming, that there were additional factors," said Richard Zeebe, an oceanographer with the University of Hawaii at Manoa."

That can't be true, the politicians and celebrities have said that global warming is ALL caused by human contributions of CO2. AND they said they can control the Global Warming if we just do what they say.

""If this additional warming which we do not really understand, was caused as a response to the CO2 warming, then there is a chance that also a future warming could be more intense than people anticipate right now," Zeebe said."

Well that would suck, but don't worry our government will legislate the CO2 so this won't happen. Right?

Maybe I should buy some more shorts.

"He said the study suggested there could be atmospheric or ocean processes as yet unknown or poorly understood that might have accelerated the warming. Possibilities could be changes in ocean currents, a much larger release of methane or even greater impacts from higher CO2 levels than currently thought."

Now wait a minute, how is cap and trade going to be able to handle ocean currents. They may have to add another 2,000 pages to account for this.

"At present, CO2 levels have already risen from 280 parts per million to nearly 390 ppm since the Industrial Revolution and could exceed a 70 percent increase during this century, a rate much faster than the Palaeocene-Eocene event, Zeebe said."

I was told as a kid that if we recycle this wouldn't happen. No wait, that was the next ice age. I remember now, if we recycled we could avoid another ice age in our lifetime, I guess we recycled too much.

""The carbon that we put into the atmosphere right now is going to stay there for a very long time. Much of it will stay there for tens of thousands of years.""

Now see obviously this "scientist" has no idea what he is talking about. The poltiticians and celebreties have it all figured out. I saw an interview not long ago where Pelosi and Obama ... Read Moresaid that this Cap and Trade will stop global warming. They have to be right, after all they are politicians and lawyers and those type of people know better than some guy who studies this stuff, right?




/UNSET sarcasm

[boobookittyfuk]

Surely it's happened in the past. What caused it then?

Global Warming (more accurately called global climate change) certainly has happened in the past due to natural causes. The difference between past events and what is happening currently is that it has never happened so rapidly or to such an extreme degree.

The fact that people feel it necessary to politicize the issue and use their hatred of liberals as an argument against the well-documented and internationally-supported facts makes me sad and angry. Unfortunately American ignorance about this issue did not vanish with the departure of the Bush Crime Family.

+1000

believing in global warming is like believing in god. Both may exist or neither may exist. You can go your whole life as a religious person or not, but if your decision is wrong you better be prepared for it. If there is something that we could do to not destroy the fuck out of our environment, shouldn't we? If you go on believing that global warming doesn't happen or is not a direct effect of human involvement, wouldn't you be pissed if your great grandchildren are not able to live with some of the same pleasures that you enjoy today?

with that said, I do not believe in god and i do believe in climate change. It may be true that humans do not influence global warming. But why not make an effort to not fuck up the environment?

[fastdogbrewing]

[
It may be true that humans do not influence global warming. But why not make an effort to not fuck up the environment?

Best comment in this thread!

[bcmaui]

Many of the Global Warming crowd are also Anti-Nuke...

Says who?

If they are not, that's great. I have no problem with nukes. I suspect you will find a majority of folks in the "green community" in my neighborhood that are also anti-nuke. It is easy to protest most anything, little more difficult when you have to also propose an alternative. Many counties in Hawaii are "nuclear power free" under current law. Many people would flip over the idea of a nuke here.

My grandfather was an electrical engineer and spent the end of his career on the design and construction of a power plant that was shut down before it started. The folks in that area are still paying the cost of that in higher electric bills 30 years later.

[bcmaui]

It may be true that humans do not influence global warming. But why not make an effort to not fuck up the environment?

I don't see how shutting down cleaner power plants here and shipping the manufacturing and energy production to countries that have little or no environmental standards (and putting many more of us out work in the process) is a net plus for the environment?

I agree on not fucking up the environment. And I agree that humans do not influence global warming. Haven't decided on the god (or big bang, or whatever you want to call the single creator, if there is one) thing yet, but I am curious how everything came to be in the first place. You can name it whatever floats your boat.

There is so much that we don't know, and we continue to learn more and more, that I am automatically suspect of science that is used for political purposes. I recall the world was going to soon enter the next ice age in the 1970's. I recall the ozone layer was soon to disappear in the 1980's. In the 90's we had the dot-com boom and learned that getting a blow job was not having sex (I still have not tested this on my wife with another female), and we reduced the amount of welfare one could receive and times were generally good (except in places like Yugoslavia, Bejing and Rwanda).

Now carbon dioxide is bad and needs to be taxed if we make it here, but not if it is produced in China or India. And we need to send some of revenues from the carbon we do tax here to China and India. I don't understand the logic behind that or how it benefits our people. Don't get me started on health scare.

[BigNastyBrew]

I am curious how everything came to be in the first place. You can name it whatever floats your boat.

I lean towards the nebular theory personally. But I'm curious regardless.

[SacoDeToro]

...Many of the Global Warming crowd are also Anti-Nuke... If they are not, that's great. I have no problem with nukes. I suspect you will find a majority of folks in the "green community" in my neighborhood that are also anti-nuke....Many people would flip over the idea of a nuke here...

I don't get it, dude. First you made an assertion, then you backpedaled, then you speculated, then you came back to asserting.

And I agree that humans do not influence global warming. Haven't decided on the god (or big bang, or whatever you want to call the single creator, if there is one) thing yet, but I am curious how everything came to be in the first place. You can name it whatever floats your boat.

Agree with whom? And I don't get the second part of your statement conflating the Big Bang Theory and a "single creator." I'm not trying to paint with a Manichean brush, but things are either real (true) or they're not. The Big Bang Theory has nothing to do with the supernatural and isn't predicated on arbitrary conjecture. Neither is AGW for that matter. But you're clearly convinced that humans have had zero impact on global warming and climate change, so I understand why you don't see any need to do anything about it.