Global Warming

[haroldeye]

You miss one crucial factor Prof. Population explosion. The number of people on this planet is increasing at a rate that is not sustainable. 1985 I was at LiveAid, a concert to help relieve famine in Ethiopia and its 27m inhabitants. I didn't go to the 25th anniversary concert which was in aid of Ethiopia and it's 50m inhabitants. They were starving and yet have managed to double their population. Not the peoples fault but it's happening and it's going to destroy this planet quicker than anything else.

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by profvolup

These are the ironies of our generation. And until people -- the consumers who use all of the energy and goods -- stop and learn these realities, and what is required to move forward, nothing will change.

We'll continue to get self-defeating legislation, and 'Happy Happy, Joy Joy' non-sense like Earth Hour ... which is a joke to engineers, and even a growing number of scientists are starting to come out against it too.

It is too bad that engineers can't make a smarter grade of humans, but the biologists are working on that. I was just reading about a giant wind farm under construction in Wyoming that will be supplying California with electricity soon. Now we just need to make it possible for more Californians to ditch their cars.

Thanks for the information. I realized a dozen years ago while sitting in a traffic jam between the San Mateo bridge and Highway 101 that we were not going to be able to keep relying on the internal combustion engine. My favorite commute was via the ferry between Alameda and San Francisco. No matter how bad the work day was, a half hour boat ride and 15 minute walk home left me in good shape.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

It is too bad that engineers can't make a smarter grade of humans, but the biologists are working on that.

Where did you read this?

Record June Temperatures in Western Europe

June 29 — Key Points

Record-breaking heat gripped most of Western Europe during June 2017, sending monthly mean temperatures about 3 degrees Celsius (4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal (1981-2010).
Scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA) and partners in England, France and Switzerland conducted a multi-method analysis to assess whether and to what extent human-caused climate change played a role in the heat.
These high temperatures are no longer rare in the current climate, occurring roughly every 10 to 30 years depending on the country.
The team found that climate change made the intensity and frequency of such extreme heat at least twice as likely in Belgium, at least four times as likely in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and central England and at least 10 times as likely in Portugal and Spain.

https://wwa.climatecentral.org/

https://wwa.climatecentral.org/analy...eat-june-2017/

[Arturo2nd]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

It is too bad that engineers can't make a smarter grade of humans, but the biologists are working on that.

Originally Posted by xyzde69

Where did you read this?

Western scientists have forsworn the use of the CRISPR tool on human embryos, but word has leaked out that Chinese biologists are already experimenting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR

[Nobody1]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Western scientists have forsworn the use of the CRISPR too on human embryosl, but word has leaked out that Chinese biologists are already experimenting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR

'At least four labs in the US, labs in China and the UK, and a US biotechnology company called Ovascience announced plans or ongoing research to apply CRISPR to human embryos.'

From your Wikipedia article.

Very interesting reading, by the way. Even for laymen like me.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by haroldeye

Not the peoples fault but it's happening and it's going to destroy this planet quicker than anything else.

You probably want to be politically correct, but a meteorite that will fall on our head will be not our fault. The Earth flying nearer or more distant of the sun will not our fault.

But what is happening now... it seems to be our fault.

Since several decades, scientists and humanist philosophers warned us. We were (and still are) negligent... very negligent.

Here is a little translated story that we had to learn at school.

The Cricket and the Ant
translation by Don Webb

The cricket had sung her song
all summer long
but found her victuals too few
when the north wind blew.
Nowhere could she espy
a single morsel of worm or fly.

Her neighbor, the ant, might,
she thought, help her in her plight,
and she begged her for a little grain
till summer would come back again.

“By next August I’ll repay both
Interest and principal; animal’s oath.”

Now, the ant may have a fault or two
But lending is not something she will do.
She asked what the cricket did in summer.

“By night and day, to any comer
I sang whenever I had the chance.”

“You sang, did you? That’s nice. Now dance.”

Who is the cricket?

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by Brian249x

Western scientists have forsworn the use of the CRISPR tool on human embryos, but word has leaked out that Chinese biologists are already experimenting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR

Yep... smarter, but it doesn't mean more ethical.
That's what I heard on the radio. Two or three years ago, several computer scientists working on artificial intelligence, wrote a letter to the UNO to warn that artificial intelligence will soon be more clever than us (a question of about 20 years) and decide to eradicate humanity because they will discern in us, that we are nothing else as miserable stupid parasite.

Here is a similar article in English.
http://observer.com/2015/08/stephen-...-intelligence/

The films Terminator or Matrix could be not so far from the reality.

[Roubignol]

Originally Posted by profvolup

Let's make two things perfectly clear ...


1) People consume energy and goods, and they don't care where it comes from. They want to be ignorant and blame others for that. They don't want to pay impact or emission fees or taxes. They don't want to see it.


2) Industry and market, not government, is causing the green revolution. Legislation does nothing. Studies only show impact. It's costs and engineering new solutions that actually solve the issue, largely because of #1.

1) That's so true. I'm considered as an extremist and the worst is I believe that I could do ever better that what I'm already doing.
I don't get car, I don't get child, since 15 years I don't travel anymore by airplane, I've stopped to eat animals, to eat and drink diary products, I'm a member of several ecological associations, I rationalise my drinkable water, I warm it by sun, I only use second-hand clothes and wear them until they are too full of holes or indecent...
Honestly speaking, I'm not sad. I don't feel bad. I'm almost even glad to live like that. That's fun. And I repeat, I even could do better.

I'm disappointed when I look at all these people having children and grandchildren and behaving like if that's not their own faults. They live like 40 years ago. They travel all around the world, they drive cars for everything, etc, etc...
I could understand them if they get no children and would be pure nihilist. But no... they believe more or less in one God and they say that they want the best for their children... But in fact they are pure egoïst. And they always have an excuse. That's not their fault. They always blame the others.

IMO. Too many people are not spiritual enough. They are like brainless robots built with a stupid software between their two ears or they are pure psychopaths.
I was like that. Collecting bullshits, travelling everywhere to look what? Human bullshits creations.

And I understood one thing, I like the vast majority of the human mankind suffer of a lack of spirituality.
In fact, less is better. More is not.

2) It depends in which country you live.
Some countries give subventions to impulse changing the way of consuming.
Already 25 years, in my engineering public school, they taught me all the concepts of how to waste less energies and my professors already learned that...

Do not forget one thing. The government is elected by the people. They represent the main opinion of the population. Sadly that's not very very bright.

We could fill 10 volumes of 1000 pages each to describe and analyse more precisely why we probably are destroying our own species and why we don't immediatly change radically.

As an ex-engineer, I'm not sure that a lot of creations of engineers contribute to improve our life. A lot of them contributed to push ourselves under illogical pressure.
I use a scythe instead of a lawn mower.
Do we need a dish washer?
Do we need a huge boiler to take a warm bath. On last summer I warmed 0.5 liter of water that I mixed with 4 liters of cold water to take a "ecological" shower.
A tractor, an ambulance, two trucks, a truck for the fireman for the village is a good thing, but do need everybody its own car?

Do I need a computer?

There are thousand of questions that we have to think. Even more with 5 billions people who don't have their own cars, their own lawn mower, their own dish washer....

[Arturo2nd]

I believe that the Big Fella does not intervene in human affairs. To to otherwise would rob us of our free will, moral responsibility, and the consequences of our actions. That being said it almost seems like karmic justice and is extremely ironic that the United States is being hit with two major storms in the first hurricane season since the climate-denier-in-chief was elected. His appointed political hacks may spout their unscientific BS while firing scientists and canceling research project, but the truth always will out.

Frightening as IRMA's projected path and enormous strength are, it even more disturbing to realize that hurricane season is far from over and there are many more vulnerable cities.

[edgarcasey]

Indeed. And it seems perhaps even more ironic and absurd that Rick Scott, the rabid psycho conservative that actually governs the state of Florida, is a major league climate change denier. The intensity and frequency of these massive storms, well, he's about to get a taste of that.