Article

2005-06-20 Caribbean-Latin America

Global Warming DOES mean the End of the World is Nigh

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Posted by too true 2005-06-20 09:59|| || Front Page|| [5 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 ...these men, called ukukus...

The leading "u" is silent.

Posted by BH 2005-06-20 10:22|| 2005-06-20 10:22|| Front Page Top

#2 What are these "government grants" you speak of?

Posted by Beaucoup: King of the Ukuku 2005-06-20 10:26|| 2005-06-20 10:26|| Front Page Top

#3 Global Warming DOES mean the End of the World is Nigh?

Neyt!...'splain...what the ukukus and earth first gloom & doomers have failed to factor into the equation is the world-wide net increase in total ice over the last century.
Thats because the dimwits didn't add up all the ice we make in our freezers at home. Sheesh, I think I'll go get some holy ice right now.

Posted by apuice 2005-06-20 10:45|| 2005-06-20 10:45|| Front Page Top

#4 End of the World is Nigh

Gee, now I don't feel bad about cashing out my IRA.

Posted by mmurray821 2005-06-20 10:57|| 2005-06-20 10:57|| Front Page Top

#5 Teodoro Sullca, a mechanic dressed in a furry tunic tied with bells, flags and a plastic doll, was disappointed. "It used to be that everyone went up," he said.

A mechanic wearin' a doll? Heck, in this red state, he'd be run outta town! This mental image alone sums up the eco-nuts to me.

Posted by BA">BA 2005-06-20 10:59|| 2005-06-20 10:59|| Front Page Top

#6 Mathias Vuille, a climatologist at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., said fireworks and campfires aren't likely to affect a massive glacier. "I couldn't possibly imagine that would have an impact," he said.

But, then he added "But that shouldn't keep us from banning all campfires and fireworks!"

Posted by BA">BA 2005-06-20 11:00|| 2005-06-20 11:00|| Front Page Top

#7 1) Climate change is inevitable, it has changed hugely over history. Do you expect it to stay static? There is no evidence that a warmer planet will be worse, and some circumstantial evidence that in fact life flourishes in warmer periods.

2) Climate change is never the end of the world, species adapt.

3) Kyoto protocol will do nothing to stop climate change, as even if the US and Australia signed and all countries lived up to their agreed carbon cuts, it would only reduce global warming by 2/10ths of a degree celsius over a 50-year period.

4) Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a benign natural gas needed by plants to grow

5) The hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by attempting to hobble the industrialised world by forcing them to stick to punitive carbon quotas (while allowing the developing world to burn as much fuel as they like) could be better spent building water pipelines, desalination plants, nature reserves to conserve habitat for species ... etc.

Wealth breeds environmental conservation. The best way to ensure environmental degradation is to make the world poorer.

So go ahead, piss billions up the wall of Kyoto just to make the industrial world poor for what even Greenpeace admits is just a symbol.

I can think of cheaper symbols.

Meanwhile the nuclear industry creates the most toxic waste imaginable, dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years, and is the main beneficiary of the Great Global Warming Scare (worse than the Y2K scare as there is no end in sight)

Posted by anon1 2005-06-20 11:15|| 2005-06-20 11:15|| Front Page Top

#8 Anon1 -

Add the solar energy people too cause thousands die every year from heat stroke and skin cancer created by the largest continuous thermonuclear reaction in the neighborhood - The Sun.

Posted by Jong Cravirong9792 2005-06-20 11:31|| 2005-06-20 11:31|| Front Page Top

#9 Heat stroke is unrelated to nuclear radiation.

Skin cancer is caused by radiation from the sun: correct.

1 in 3 Australians get it we are the skin cancer capital of the world.

But that is why we wear sunscreen, shady hats, sunglasses and long sleeved shirts.

Skin cancer is not an advertisement for how safe radiation is but rather that it is carcinogenic, cumulative and needs to be minimised.

Posted by anon1 2005-06-20 11:35|| 2005-06-20 11:35|| Front Page Top

#10 The Nuclear industry can also use those byproducts in breeder reactors, much like Japan is doing, to enrich and create more fuel from the waste. The rest of the waste can be dealt with in many different ways, all of them fairly safe - and much safer in aggregate than the current burning of coal and oil. You're more at risk to radiation poisoning by the radon in your basement than you are to reactor byproducts.

A vast proportion of the "nuclear waste" is low-level stuff that was made into "nuclear" waste not by radiation, but by legislative fiat without regard to actual probabilities of radiative damage. Things like structural members of buildings, etc.

Nukes and the hydrogen economy are the only way out of the oil patch. And even then, eventually nuclear power will have to be fusion, not fisson, power.

Aside fromall that, the solar output probably has more to do with cyclical climatalogical change. Look at temps in the middle ages, or in the earlier eras (dinosaurs, etc). The earth used to be a LOT warmer than now.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-06-20 11:39|| 2005-06-20 11:39|| Front Page Top

#11 Glaciers receding in Montana's Glacier Nat'l park too.

I seen it!

Water Cartels will control all by 2045

MM

Posted by Mountain Man 2005-06-20 12:05|| 2005-06-20 12:05|| Front Page Top

#12 Exactly, Old Spook: earth has been both a lot warmer and a lot colder than now. No biggie!

But re: reactors.

Breeder reactors also make a stack of plutonium for bombs which is why Saddam wanted one so badly in the early '80s.

If nuclear energy is the big winner from the fake-carbon-scare it's going to be impossible to stop every tinpot third world dictator who wants it from getting nukes because they will ALL be clamouring for reactors 'for energy only'.

And the waste is only one problem of reactors, there's the decommissioning, the contaminated land, the fact you cannot get radio isotopes out of the biosphere once they are released into the environment and that even a slight increase in background radiation produces more cancers and birth deformities as the effects of radiation are cumulative.

On the other hand, Saudi oil reserves MAY be running out. They have reportedly all peaked. This leaves Iraq as second biggest reserve and (I think) Venezuela as 3rd biggest...

Posted by anon1 2005-06-20 12:37|| 2005-06-20 12:37|| Front Page Top

#13 As has been mentioned here before, there are breeder reactors based on thorium that produced U233 rather than plutonium -- this approach is heavily favored by India and some other countries already. And the Integral Fast Reactor design recycles nearly all of the radioactive waste - what remains decays within 300 years to the base activity of the original ores, i.e. as low as in nature if they had not been mined.

even a slight increase in background radiation produces more cancers and birth deformities as the effects of radiation are cumulative.

Define "slight" and "more". Warning: I am closely related to a health physicist who specialized in nuclear issues so precision and accuracy will get you a better hearing here ....

Posted by too true 2005-06-20 12:50|| 2005-06-20 12:50|| Front Page Top

#14 Global Warming DOES mean the End of the World is Nigh

I may as well run out and buy that Beemer bike I've been coveting, and enjoy it while I can....

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-06-20 13:51|| 2005-06-20 13:51|| Front Page Top

#15 Two things: Global warming started 8,000 years ago and without it, we'd be well into another ice age by now - based on analysis of solar cycles.

Hydrogen is nice, but takes more energy to make than it releases, so you need cheap electricity to make hydrogen. The cheapest there ever was was nuclear. Hydro floods, coal kills (mines, transport, burning), wind power has drawbacks (especially for aesthetics, birds, and bats!), solar costs too much (now), and fusion is still a good ways off.

Third (out of two) there are no easy answers, only tough choices!

Posted by Bobby 2005-06-20 14:17|| 2005-06-20 14:17|| Front Page Top

#16 A young engineer once asked me what caused the last ice age and I said, "It got cold". He then asked me what ended it and I said, "It got warm".

Posted by Deacon Blues">Deacon Blues 2005-06-20 16:13|| 2005-06-20 16:13|| Front Page Top

#17 Heat stroke is unrelated to nuclear radiation. Bullsh@@! Sunshine is nuclear radiation. anon1, you sound a lot like the nuclear scaremonger I throughly debunked last year. I'll spell it out for you (again) in words of one syllable. All risks are relative. Doing anything has risks associated with it, as does doing nothing. An argument requires that you quantify the risks relative to any alternatives. Otherwise you are just spewing emotive claptrap.

Posted by phil_b 2005-06-20 17:04|| 2005-06-20 17:04|| Front Page Top

#18 >And the waste is only one problem of reactors, there's the decommissioning, the contaminated land<

Sorry sport, but you must be thinking about them Soviet reactors. USuns ain't allowed to contaminate the land.

>the fact you cannot get radio isotopes out of the biosphere once they are released into the environment<

Anything can be cleaned up if you're willing to spend the time and money. Even Chernobyl, but the Russkies ain't gots no money, nor do the Ukrainians, Moldavians, Belarussians, etc. etc.

>and that even a slight increase in background radiation produces more cancers and birth deformities as the effects of radiation are cumulative.<

BS and incredible BS at that. You should stop reading Greenpeace's phoney science on nuclear power. There's plenty of sane places on the web were you can find out about nuclear power that doesn't start with "OH SH*T, We're all gonna die!"

davemac

Posted by Ebbavitle Glereling2593 2005-06-20 17:25|| 2005-06-20 17:25|| Front Page Top

#19 Everyone calm down, it's a typo. They don't mean the End of the World is Nigh, they mean the End of the World is Nighy.

Posted by RJ Schwarz 2005-06-20 20:33|| 2005-06-20 20:33|| Front Page Top

#20 anon1 wrote:

1) Climate change is inevitable, it has changed hugely over history. Do you expect it to stay static? There is no evidence that a warmer planet will be worse, and some circumstantial evidence that in fact life flourishes in warmer periods.

Yep. The chair I'm sitting in would have been deep under an inland sea a couple hundred million years ago.

The hundreds of billions of dollars wasted by attempting to hobble the industrialised world by forcing them to stick to punitive carbon quotas (while allowing the developing world to burn as much fuel as they like) could be better spent...

All that stuff, and also exporting capitalism.

Posted by eLarson 2005-06-20 21:08|| http://larsonian.blogspot.com]">[http://larsonian.blogspot.com] 2005-06-20 21:08|| Front Page Top

#21 Phil_b: Sunshine is nuclear radiation

How so? If you mean that it is generated by Sun's nucular oven, you're wroooong! To your consolation, you are not alone. Almost everyone is convinced that is the case. But Sun isn't a slow burning nucular oven.

Posted by Sobiesky 2005-06-20 23:55|| 2005-06-20 23:55|| Front Page Top

00:03 anon1
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