http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,,2225383,00.html
Yes, I realize I just posted a link to this retard’s nonsense article. I’m hoping that if we shunt even a small portion of our vast daily traffic in his direction we can somehow create a makeshift Denial of Service attack by having our intelligent, educated readers suck up all his bandwidth so the other retards on the internet can’t read what this retard wrote.
It could happen!
Basically this guy is buying into everyone else’s nonsense about climate change and doing it with exceptional zeal. But it isn’t the article that I’d like you to read: it’s the *comments* at the bottom of the page.
“I believe that the only way to help prevent global warming is if some means were to come about by which we could extract CO2 from the atmosphere itself[.]“
Yes, that’s brilliant. What would we do with it? Besides waste more of our precious energy reserves by attempting to break the second law of thermodynamics.
“What we’re doing now is comparable to the Siberian Traps of 250 million years ago. In other words, we’re performing the man-made carbon emissions equivalent of truly massive volcanic activity. Judging by the fossil record, that episode wiped out 90 percent of life on earth, apparently through massive global warming from CO2. Let’s hope we don’t exceed it.”
This seemingly intelligent individual, while confessing that climate change *has* occurred without mankind’s influence, steadfastly believes that we can somehow match the output of “massive volcanic activity.” In fact, a single active volcanic eruption produces about 500 *million* tons of carbon dioxide per year. Current carbon output due to power generation (the largest source of carbon emissions worldwide) is almost 10 billion tons of CO2.
That’s eighteen volcanoes.
From Wikipedia (Yes, I know, not the greatest source, but better than one loser’s comment to another loser), what caused the Siberian Traps:
“Vast volumes of basaltic lava paved over a large expanse of primeval Siberia in a flood basalt event. Today the area covered is about 2 million km² and estimates of the original coverage are as high as 7 million km². The original volume of lava is estimated to range from 1 to 4 million km³.
“The area covered lies between 50 and 75 degrees north latitude and 60 to 120 degrees east longitude. The volcanism continued for a million years and spanned the Permian-Triassic boundary. There is no firm evidence that this event caused (or helped cause) the Permian extinction, but the timing of the two events is provocative.”
Impressive that the Industrial Revolution has done the same thing so much faster! Or else just impossible. Besides which, the Siberian Traps are also blamed for a *reduction* in global temperature in addition to a warming trend thereafter — not the symptoms we’re seeing today. Congratulations, genius.
(Admittedly, some sources suggest that the Siberian event took place MUCH more quickly — over the course of a mere 200,000 years. Much closer to the tenure of our beloved Industrial Revolution, right?)
Now, another comment from the peanut gallery:
“Clearly the first step is halt deforestation, the easiest and cheapest way to halt 20% of annual emissions and the doubly whammy of diminshed absorbtion capacity.”
Patently false. Trees extract carbon from the atmosphere when growing in order to construct their bodies — which we often refer to as “wood.” Not only to trees *stop* extracting carbon when they reach their full height (and most of them do that in a heartbeat on the global scale), but they also tend to die and rot, which releases carbon once again. Or we cut them down for building materials used in carbon-intensive processes such as shipping and manufacturing. Unless, of course, they’re covered up by some geologic process and buried underground to produce coal for future generations of polluters…
“It is difficult to get hold of all the figures necessary to show that countries can become near-zero carbon countries. However, there is a simple explanation that adequately reveals how this necessary target can be achieved. All our power requirements are for lighting, heating, transport, and energy for such things as industry on down to exercise machines. To make things simple we can assume that each category is 25% of total power. The lighting can be zero rated by building Buxton Geothermal Turbine Generators, the heating can be near-zero rated by installing Starlite coatings, that prevents heat escaping, on the walls and ceilings of all premises, and by having electrical heating from renewable sources we cut heating CO2 emissions to zero. Transport can be made near-zero in terms of carbon emissions by ensuring that all vehicles use carbon zero electricity, instead of petrol. This may seem to be an anathema to ”petrol heads” but this displeasure can be simply overcome. At the moment when inventors come up with new technologies for electrical vehicles Oil Companies buy and destroy the patents and designs. These patents have a shelf life of ten years so we could soon put together a group of past inventors in this field to reproduce their work legally, as an intergovernmental team. We still have the problem of transport by aeroplane and ship having to use fossil fuels. However, their carbon footprints can be at least halved by having their fuels mixed with water using an ultrasonic dibber. Finally, the power needed for energy can be made entirely of carbon free electricity. New ways of making industry work using electricity instead of the gas that they are used to will be needed, but these are not insurmountable problems given that the Governments of the world have ten years to achieve the target.”
You, sir, live in an interesting fantasy world. In your world, heating uses more power than cooling. Electric lighting is a significant cause of carbon emissions. Transportation emits as much carbon as power production and there is a method for producing fuel for transport which does not produce carbon. Electric cars can be powered without the need for electric power generation facilities. And, most astonishingly, “renewable” resources somehow work!
You must either A) really love the thought of nuclear power, or B) be from an alternate universe. See, where the rest of us live, energy consumption peaks when it’s hot rather than when its cold, industrial loads (rather than lighting) consume most of our kilowatts — and emit approximately fifty percent of our carbon — and electric cars are pushed by electric energy companies looking for off-peak loads to stabilize their income and SELL MORE ELECTRICITY.
Ok, I’ve wasted enough of your time and mine posting this tripe. If you want to read any more, go have a look at the page. Thankfully, there are a few commenters with a shred of common sense; just not nearly enough.
If you want to do something constructive with your time, you can Google “tripe” and see just what I think of this nonsense if you don’t know already.
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