The Alternative Green Energy Thread

1961Nick

Scientists do appear to have been encircled by the environmentalists ... if any stick their heads above the parapet they're immediately branded a charlatan.

Cardew

Excellent decision to post that article on this thread!

Not sure that the 'world's leading enviornmentalist' - Greta Thunberg - would endorse the article;)

pile-o-stone

JKenH wrote: »

Interesting video for those of us who like to listen to both sides of an argument. My apologies to those who will be offended by the content.

The video was by Dr. John Robson who holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Texas at Austin. If you're going to listen to both sides of an argument, shouldn't both sides of the argument come from experts in the field you are discussing, with those experts having relatively equal status in that field?

pile-o-stone

Interesting article for those of us who are not science deniers or those with a vested interest in the fossil fuel industry..

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99

"A 2013 study in Environmental Research Letters found 97% of climate scientists agreed with this link in 12,000 academic papers that contained the words “global warming” or “global climate change” from 1991 to 2011. Last week, that paper hit 1m downloads, making it the most accessed paper ever among the 80+ journals published by the Institute of Physics, according to the authors.

The pushback has been political rather than scientific. In the US, the rightwing thinktank the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is reportedly putting pressure on Nasa to remove a reference to the 97% study from its webpage. The CEI has received event funding from the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and Charles Koch Institute, which have much to lose from a transition to a low-carbon economy.

But among academics who study the climate, the convergence of opinion is probably strengthening, according to John Cook, the lead author of the original consensus paper and a follow-up study on the “consensus about consensus” that looked at a range of similar estimates by other academics.

He said that at the end of his 20-year study period there was more agreement than at the beginning: “There was 99% scientific consensus in 2011 that humans are causing global warming.” With ever stronger research since then and increasing heatwaves and extreme weather, Cook believes this is likely to have risen further and is now working on an update.

“As expertise in climate science increases, so too does agreement with human-caused global warming,” Cook wrote on the Skeptical Science blog. “The good news is public understanding of the scientific consensus is increasing. The bad news is there is still a lot of work to do yet as climate deniers continue to persistently attack the scientific consensus.”"

There are still people who believe that the earth is flat. Some individuals will always take a counter viewpoint from proven science,but they generally consist of people with vested interest, religious zealots, conspiracy theorists or attention seekers.

joefizz

pile-o-stone wrote: »

The pushback has been political rather than scientific.



Some individuals will always take a counter viewpoint from proven science,but they generally consist of people with vested interest, religious zealots, conspiracy theorists or attention seekers.

I linked to a video in another thread which pretty much summed this up. Its the zealots and may I add, stupid people, to that list which are causing the damage on both sides.

Man made global warming is a thing, for that there is the concensus but thats where it ends, blaming it/ denying it for all our ills is the current political thing. Look at australia at the minute, its burned for centuries, probably millenia but now its human population has almost doubled in 50 years thats the main issue rather than natural/man made climate change. If these fires were burning with no-one around would it really be an issue (other than the emissions?). Look at the photos/videos coming out about the regrowth in the previously burned areas. Ive stayed in ecualyptus forest in south america, lovely smell but stayed in a clearing that was cut back every 6 months or so.



Look at the way the guardian article is worded. no doubt left is in quotes, that gets around press complaints.
The scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming is likely to have passed 99%. Likely used which is a general get out clause. Also humans causing global warming is not defined, how much of a percentage and what exactly is global warming anyway.
Then theres the real science bit about models for temperature. The deniers will latch on to the modelling of historical data and whilst they do have a point about models (hence why 1.5C, 2C etc are all balls as they are forecasts) the data is there and is open for interpretation but people tend to shoot the messenger as they have no scientific background to delve into the data.
There is absolutely no doubt we are contributing to climate change, what is currently up for debate is whether we are exacerbating natural climate change or mitigating it. Thats the really scary part and the elephant in the room. What if what we are doing is actually mitigating it until it turns again? Thats of course the realms of speculation or modelling as its known in the scientific community.


Thats from a newspaper subject to strict press regulation, when people quote blogs and youtubers then...


Heres an article from 15 years ago, Britain will be siberian by 2020... Id better put the heating on...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver
Now you could look at that and think it was just nonsense or bad reporting but no doubt in 2004 one of the models thought it was a possibility just not a probability and they had to game it out. It doesnt mean the report was wrong, just the reporting of it was skewed in such a way as to make out it it was a higher probability than it was. It was still a valid possibility as was invasion from outer space... ...or an asteroid hitting... things they have probably gamed as well.
Stupid people will take those comments and run with those 'but you equated man made global warming with invasion by aliens'. No, I didnt. Not even close. The 'debate' will then focus on what I meant by aliens (even though I didnt mention it in the original text) and so on down the rabbit hole, ignoring the underlying point of the article that climate change is real and we all should be doing a hell of a lot more about it.



The main elephant in the room with all of this is us acting like a parasitic species and overpopulation and with all the best will in the world thats what fossil fuel usage is about. Add in human nature and greed and its easier/cheaper to burn fossil fuels than do anything about it.


Its easier to say to people that electric cars will save the world, no they wont, not buying any car will save the world. Of course make the cars expensive enough and tax the poor people off the roads and that has the same effect.
Ive been part of a study to see what is involved in reducing household output (not just the co2 thing that people bang on about) and to be honest unless I fancied going back to living in the Falls in the 70s as a kid, its a non starter. Nobody (including me) got to the end of the study because its just too bloody hard (cutting back energy use 30%, mileage 30% less, food sourced ethically from a 30 mile radius, no flights etc etc). I only did the energy bit with the solar panels, mileage was doable with walking to the shops more, food was ok as I live in NI with good farms around me but if you dont like spuds you are going to be in trouble and the no flights thing was ok as I could take ferries to england but off to Spain in a couple of weeks and although I could get a ferry there its just too much ball ache.
I cant see any political party (apart from the greens) advocating any of that, never mind implementing it. They need to prop up the car industry so diesel is better for the environment, sorry we meant ev cars, sorry we meant hydrogen ice... etc etc.
Look at todays news about flybe, lets drop apd to save jobs...

Cardew

joefizz wrote: »

. Its the zealots and may I add, stupid people, to that list which are causing the damage on both sides.

Man made global warming is a thing, for that there is the concensus but thats where it ends, blaming it/ denying it for all our ills is the current political thing.

Excellent post!


The video posted by JKenH -
https://youtu.be/ewJ6TI8ccAw is of course funded by vested interests but does it make the points it raised any more invalid, and unworthy of discussion, than the vested interest articles produced by the RE industry.


As the video freely acknowledges virtually all scientists agree there is global warming and that human activity is contributing to that global warming. The point of contention is how much humans are contributing to that warming.


It obviously makes sense(to me anyway) to move toward RE.What I find sad is how easily the term 'denier' is used by zealots.

pile-o-stone

joefizz wrote: »

Its easier to say to people that electric cars will save the world, no they wont, not buying any car will save the world. Of course make the cars expensive enough and tax the poor people off the roads and that has the same effect.
Ive been part of a study to see what is involved in reducing household output (not just the co2 thing that people bang on about) and to be honest unless I fancied going back to living in the Falls in the 70s as a kid, its a non starter. Nobody (including me) got to the end of the study because its just too bloody hard (cutting back energy use 30%, mileage 30% less, food sourced ethically from a 30 mile radius, no flights etc etc). I only did the energy bit with the solar panels, mileage was doable with walking to the shops more, food was ok as I live in NI with good farms around me but if you dont like spuds you are going to be in trouble and the no flights thing was ok as I could take ferries to england but off to Spain in a couple of weeks and although I could get a ferry there its just too much ball ache.
I cant see any political party (apart from the greens) advocating any of that, never mind implementing it. They need to prop up the car industry so diesel is better for the environment, sorry we meant ev cars, sorry we meant hydrogen ice... etc etc.
Look at todays news about flybe, lets drop apd to save jobs...

I totally agree with your points, especially the one about political parties advocating any of that, apart from parties like the Greens who have no hope of getting into power. That's why I think individuals can make a difference and 'vote with their wallets'. Our family are all veggies or vegans and so we put zero money into the hands of farmers who raise livestock. We don't fly anymore so we put zero money into the hands of the airlines. We are not waiting for governments to do something, we are doing it ourselves and it feels very empowering. A lot of naysayers say that individuals or individual countries can't do anything, but that's just an excuse to do nothing - often a deliberate tactic used by vested interest to retain the status quo.

Our current project is turning our back garden into an 'edible garden', inspired by a BBC program of the same name where the presenter grew food in her London garden. It's amazing how much you can grow when you're there every day to coddle the plants with weeding and pest removal. You don't have to turn your garden into an ugly allotment either, a lot of edible plants have attractive foliage or flowers. A favourite of mine is the Jerusalem Artichoke (see picture below) which looks great, tastes nice and is really good for your gut health.

JKenH

What if the ‘deniers’ are right and more CO2 might really be not so bad after all? We definitely need to reduce pollution but further expenditure on reducing CO2 levels may not be warranted - CO2 is actually good for us. So we should carry on rolling out RE to reduce pollution but maybe reducing CO2 is the wrong target.

https://youtu.be/pHCCE-sw_Sc

pile-o-stone

JKenH wrote: »

What if the ‘deniers’ are right and more CO2 might really be not so bad after all?

Well if you're going to gamble then you need to look at the possible outcomes.

If the 'deniers' are right then we have 'wasted' some money on making the environment cleaner (not just due to emissions but the damage that oil and coal extraction do.

If the 'deniers' are wrong, then the consequences are much worse.

JKenH

pile-o-stone wrote: »

If the 'deniers' are right then we have 'wasted' some money on making the environment cleaner (not just due to emissions but the damage that oil and coal extraction do.

No, we haven’t wasted that money - a cleaner environment is a bonus and we have developed new more efficient clean technologies for the future.