Global Warming

[Kaze]

Another hot topic in today's debates. Discuss!

[Dr.Aaron]

Once electric cars are out, we can say KTHXBAI to global warning...That'll be the day.:)

[Kaze]

First off the world as a whole needs to do something, blaming the US won't solve anything. But hey it seem like the rest of world thinks its cool to do. What about countries like China and newly developed African nations? They have a ton of factories and what not. They tend to pollute quite a bit.

If everything was clean you would pay a million dollars to get a toothbrush because they would have to pay to research the plastic that makes it. You can't be clean and economical. And really I think I would much rather have an economy rather then clean things.

Now on to the cars, SUV's aren't the cause of fuel shortages like many people think. What about airplanes or even ocean liners? They burn more fuel then cars do easily. But we do need to start thinking about switching cars to another form of fuel. Hydrogen is a good possibility, but why not ethanol? Ethanol is cheap, come on its corn, and it would be easy to convert existing engines over to burn ethanol. A lot of the gas in the US contains ethanol already.

With the power plants there are other alternatives to coal, you have hydroelectric, solar, etc. So no you wouldn't have to pollute to get hydrogen.

[marrow]

@ Kaze:
sorry to nit-pick, and i'm not blaming the US entirely, but please look at these figures of CO2 emissions per head of population:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2-emissions.html
we all need to do something about global warming, and UK is one of the biggest offenders, but the reason the US gets a hammering on this issue is that your government does not seem to be remotely interested in the immediacy of the problem. In Europe at least, there are serious steps being taken to reach targets for greenhouse gas reduction and fines for countries failing to hit those targets.

[Kaze]

Well I'm fully aware that the USA is one of the biggest pollution offenders in the world, but look at how much those other countries pollute. It isn't just us.

[Mad Scientist]

As far as i can see the only viable option is nuclear. Thourgly nuclear.

[jambo]

Nuclear winter will obviously cancel out Global Warming :lol:

[Flarty]

i think renewable energy such as offshore wind turbines is the only real answer,

[Kaze]

lol, hamster wheels

Sorry, I had to.

[DarkFlood]

Even if we did do ethanol, Do you realize how much space would be taken just to grow the corn to make it? I read that it would be about half the area of the US just so it can sustain itself. Nuclear is good.. If you don't mind waking up with a second nose. And Hydrogen seems the best choice, the input and output is essentially water. Not to mention that due to its explosive tendencies, people will avoid accidents more. And the ones that don't are victims to natural selection.:haha:

You'd have to be a fool not to believe that at least something is happening.

[OddFlame 2.0]

It doesn't seem to me like the US cares about Global Warming, which is a shame.

You can't just say "Hydro cars stop global warming LOL". Global Warming is irreversible. It's also destroying the worlds most valuable sources of converting carbon dyoxide into oxygen (The Amazon, etc.), thus accelerating Global Warming even further.

[hoboman725]

Nuclear winter will obviously cancel out Global Warming :lol:
Futurama for the kill :)

I'm seriously waiting for the day that we can have hydrogen powered cars. I won't claim to know much of the science behind it, but from what I hear perfecting and mass-producing this would solve a hell of a lot of problems.

[Mercer]

Our problem is that the human race is an inheriently disruptive species, eventually this world will either destory us or we'll shape it to how we need it, wheather or not you consider this a good thing.

And wheather or not Global Warming is caused by our methods of powering our industry and machines, it is happening. There is reallly nothing we can do to stop it! We're actually in a cool period of the Earth's climate. There have been times in the past where almost all of North America was submerged in shallow seas. In that time period large continental Glaciers didn't really exist. That's where most of our water is kept when it's cold. And it has gotten COLDER really quick in the history of our planet that's when sea level goes way down.

ANYWAY, I think the human race has had a very small contribution to current warming. It was bound to happen. Now the real question is if we can adapt to this new Climate!

P.S. Nuclear power is not nearly as dangerous as Americans (and I am one btw) think it is...there are huge risks to it, of course, as there is to anything! But we can reduce those risks to a very small factor.

[marrow]

use the rising sea levels to generate electricity with tidal barages.
use the increased violent tropical storms to generate electricity with (strong) wind turbines.
place solar panels in all the new deserts created.

global warming means more power for all people who aren't killed in floods.

[Dr.Aaron]

Nuclear winter will obviously cancel out Global Warming :lol:
Hehe futurama ftw.

@ Kaze:
sorry to nit-pick, and i'm not blaming the US entirely, but please look at these figures of CO2 emissions per head of population:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2-emissions.html
we all need to do something about global warming, and UK is one of the biggest offenders, but the reason the US gets a hammering on this issue is that your government does not seem to be remotely interested in the immediacy of the problem. In Europe at least, there are serious steps being taken to reach targets for greenhouse gas reduction and fines for countries failing to hit those targets.
UK isn't one of the biggest offenders, as it only has 6 digits while US has 7, unless you meant US... Meh just put loads of water into a rocket and launch it into the sun. Solved :)

[marrow]

i meant the per capita figure- i think we are the 8th worst in the top 20 per head of population.

[Kaze]

UK isn't one of the biggest offenders, as it only has 6 digits while US has 7, unless you meant US

#8 out of 20¹ is not exactly a clean and efficient country.

Blame it on the U.S all you want, but even if the USA just suddenly stopped completely with CO2 emissions, the other 19 in the top 20 would still produce 3,513,243 tons¹ of Carbon Dioxide over nearly a 50 year span. That is 70,265 tons a year.

Keep in mind that, when you come out with your statement that the United States of America produces more Carbon Dioxide per year than the U.K, you also need to realize that the United Kingdom is 3,624,439 sq. miles smaller² than the United States of America, and has around 240,039,397 less² people inhabiting it's lands. We are going to naturally have more emissions.

----

Works Cited:

¹Union Of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2-emissions.html)

²Wikipedia U.S.A Page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States) and Wikipedia U.K. Page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom)

[Kester]

The US' emissions per head are still over 2 times the amount the UK releases. However you look at it, it means, on average, each person in the US pollutes more than what 2 people from the UK do.

The US also refuse to sign the Kyoto protocol.

[Kaze]

You still also fail to realize that this statement:

UK isn't one of the biggest offenders

Is completely falsified. The United Kingdom is still in the upper-quartile of the top 10 CO2 emission offenders in the world. The United States could be completely erased from the world, and you would still see massive amounts of emissions from all countries.

The fact is, one country alone can not cause global warming. True, we are a larger producer of emissions, but we are also one of the largest countries in the world. There is alot of barge shipping, train-shipping, and heavy-truck transportation in our country due to the large size. The United Kingdom, being much smaller than the U.S, does not require such large means of transportation.

The bigger the country, the more the required emissions are to keep the economy stable. If we suddenly cut off all major industries from any form of major CO2 pollution, the economy would go downhill and straight through the floor.

[marrow]

i don't think kester or i fail to realise the UK is among the worst polluters- in fact i openly acknowledged our position of 8th.
my point is the apparent difference in attitude and approach to the problem from our respective governments. it SEEMS that the UK are more inclined to take steps to reduce emmissions and set targets for this reduction.

At no point have i suggested the US is responsible for global warming, just that they could be more responsible in dealing with the problem.

[Tesseract]

Cold fusion all the way....I know how to do it but I'm not telling.

Also, the sea levels are not going to rise at all when the ice caps melt. It doesn't make sense. If you have an ice cube floating in a glass of water that it filled to the brim, and the ice cube melts the water level doesn't rise at all. The only problem is that fresh water would turn into salt water and no more drinking water!

P.S. - if you can't appreciate the joking tone of this post...go to hell.

[Kaze]

We obviously could, and hopefully will when Bush gets kicked out in '08. He's too concentrated on the War in Iraq and isn't worrying enough about other issues here back at home. Honestly, he's had it rough coming in and starting out with a terrorist attack and war on his shoulders, but he needs to buck up and take it. It can't be the easiest thing to do, but there have been others that have gone through worse.

[Mad Scientist]

It is time to unveil my beliefs about envriomentalism. Prepare for a very long post. This was written several moths ago, however i have not really seen anything that has significanlty changed my opinions.

On Enviromentalism

I recently was privileged to visit the jet facility in culham near oxfordshire - the world’s largest nuclear fusion research facility. I'm willing to bet that as soon as I mention the word nuclear, some people are immediately going to start thinking how bad and evil that everyone knows nuclear power is.

Well I’d like to tell you something about the planet we live on:
There are currently 6 to 7 billion people on earth. This figure that is so often tossed around so casually is absolutely staggering. It’s hard to imagine that each and every one of those people is an individual that in so many ways is unique and never to be repeated. Each and every one of these people needs to consume between 1000 and 2500 calories a day to stay healthy. Each of those people will require medical attention at some point in their lives. Each of those individuals wants to have a good quality of life for themselves and their children. Everyone wants electricity, and a car and a house. The amount of resources and power required to supply those who already have these things, let alone those who don't is astronomical. 1 billion tones of iron are mined each year to make our products. This means every hour 11000 tonnes of iron ore must be dug out of the ground in order to feed our industries. 67 million barrels of oil a day must be drilled to fuel our cars and make our plastics. The point I am trying to make is that we are facing a crisis that every civilization throughout history has faced, but on a truly gigantic scale: the problem that we do not have sufficient resources to sustain the current quality of life for the number of people on the planet. Even global warming is this kind of problem, as you can treat the Earth's ability to absorb waste carbon dioxide as a resource we are running out of.

So therefore how is this problem to be solved? I present to you that there are effectively two solutions to it. Only one of these is really discussed much, but contrary to popular opinion, I believe it is the wrong one. to illustrate these two solutions below is the problem I have suggested, colour coded to illustrate the solutions:

Our resources are inadequate for our current level of usage.

I will deal with the section in red first.
If our current level of usage is too high, then it is a logical supposition that we should reduce our level of usage. This would be done through making sacrifices such as taking the bus instead of the car, not buying the luxury toilet paper and the suchlike. Here is where my quibble with this solution is: it doesn't work. How many people do you know that can honestly say that they live a truly green life? That they use no electricity? Ride no oil powered vehicle? Eschew combustion as a source of energy? Recycle every possible thing that they can? Forgive me if my assumption is false but i doubt that you or I know very many such people at all. The reason is simply that after struggling to improve our quality of life for 4000 years or so of recorded history, humans do not want to let go of their hard earned quality of life. Indeed, as the whole purpose of preventing global warming is to preserve quality of life and civilization, any solution that must remove quality of life anyway is hardly ideal. Not only this, but to my knowledge, no civilization has ever successfully limited its own resources in order to overcome the resource problem. Look at the ancient Polynesians, who when they ran out of space to expand, did not limit their population an implement birth control, fought a series of short and brutal wars that nearly wiped them out. Indeed there are already the stirrings of the future "energy wars" on the horizon, given the current imperialistic attitudes of many powerful countries. To implement this one would have to either limit quality of life (unpopular) or limit population (more unpopular still). Without draconian and near unenforceable measures then this method would fail, and even with them the world would be a most unpleasant place to live.

Now let us look at the blue section.
If our current level of resources are inadequate, then if we place more emphasis on the blue section, then
The logical supposition is that we must acquire new resources. Well this is all well and good you may say, but where can we acquire new resources? The Earth is already being mined and farmed to an unbelievable extent in order to supply what we have. This argument is only valid when considering the first two words of this sentence: this earth. There is no way to say this without appearing to have gone more insane than usual, so I will say it straight: space is the answer. Space is brimming with vast amounts of resources and energy. I earlier quoted the statistic that humanity digs up about 1billion tonnes of iron a year. A single near earth asteroid (NEA) with a high nickel/iron content would produce as much as a trillion tonnes of iron ore. Any cost in acquiring it would be repaid and more by the shear volume of ores that can be brought back. You may claim that the technology to do this is far beyond us, and that hauling consumables into orbit would be a ridiculous expense. This is completely untrue; indeed you could extract such useful things as oxygen from lunar rocks, with nothing more complex than a cooking oven. The chemicals for food, the oxygen we breathe, water, energy, everything that humans need is available in space with simple and common technology. Why hasn't this been done already given the huge payoffs? I believe the reason is due to how space has been developed so far. An analogy is the colonial period following the industrial revolution. The British government colonized many parts of the world by subsidizing the work out to corporations and companies to do the work, before the government moved in. The French did things the other way round, by having government agencies do the groundwork and companies only moving in afterwards. The British made trillions, while some sources suggest that the French actually made a net loss on their acquisitions. I think you can see how this fits in with the American space program. With the correct management, much industry could be shipped off planet and with access to resources from space, not only would production costs drop, but there would be no danger of polluting earth.

I could go on all day about why space is the best option for fighting climate change but I see no point in making this even more tedious. so I wish to talk about a third part of "techno-econo-enviromentalism". the part that relates to my trip to JET.

One thing that compliments both of these aproaches is the use of "green" technology. The advancement of technology helps environmentalism by making our use of resources more efficient eg. Energy saver light bulbs. Indeed, the only way to improve environmental impact without curtailing consumer goods is technology. No government edict can make industries pollute less unless the technology exists for them to do so. In simple terms, I believe that technology is not just our greatest but indeed our only hope of preventing global warming. This is another reason why I support the second form of environmentalism - that it is conducive to finding the technological solutions we need. The closed economy of the first option would not have the resources necessary to spend on long term investments like research while an expansive and progressive economy would.


This is where I would like to speak of a technological interest that could be one of the few things that can fight global warming on the scale necessary: Nuclear power.

Renewable energy is quite simply a pipe dream. I don't like to make sweeping generalizations as such, but in this case I feel I am justified. Wind power (which receives a great deal of good press for some reason) will never be able to provide sufficient power to takeover even a quarter of the energy this country needs. It is extremely unreliable and limited. some people Naively state that the wind is inexhaustible. Although the wind will not run out, the places where we can build turbines will. There simply aren’t enough windy hills in the county for wind power to make a difference, and even if there were, the gigawatts of power that would needed to be extracted from the winds would alter rainfall patterns across the British isles. Many areas of farmland would become un-arable and food prices would rise. Wave and solar are also of limited use in this country. The need is for a form of power that we can control, one that is in our hands. The only available alternative is a nuclear one.

Nuclear power does not create greenhouse gasses. Some people have foolishly said that nuclear power is a contributor to global warming as the energy require to extract fuel results in carbon dioxide. This is only true if that energy is provide by non nuclear sources. in reality nuclear saves the most climate for the most megawatts produced. This includes ALL forms of renwable power as well. People also have fears about safety. I would like to state in large capital letters: MODERN NUCLEAR POWER IS SAFE! Modern reactors quiet simply cannot meltdown. Any rise in temperature above a critical point triggers failsafe mechanisms that flood the core. They are as incapable of going into meltdown as a non Hollywood car exploding in a huge mushroom cloud at the slightest crash. And finally there is the issue of waste. Waste is a problem, true, but the amount of waste produced by the nuclear industry is tiny compared to the amount of carbon dioxide our current stations release. Lets take an example:


If i want to produce enough energy to boil a kettle of water (say 2 liters of water, requres 672Kj, assuming non of the water is lost or vapourised), consider that fossil fuels would release about 35g of carbon dioxide (assuming you are using very clean natural gas). If the kettle was heated by conventional nuclear fission, this would produce less than 0.000000001g of radioactive waste. In other words, the waste may be fairly nasty stuff, but it is by far the lesser of two evils.



Also, the problem of long term storage is on the verge of being solved. The deep storage research facility in Finland has recently tested new methods of storage that guarantee that radiation will not be released during the lifetime of these wastes.

Even so nuclear fuel is scarce and waste is still produced, meaning that it can only be a stopgap until a more lasting source of power is found. That power is fusion.

If you've been intrigued enough to read this far, then you may be interested enough to look into the small presentation that I made years ago about fusion, in order to find out why its is so worthwhile. the link is below.


http://www.blindrage.co.uk/simon/Fusion.ppt


This is why I feel very lucky to have had a look around the JET facility. The place was fascinating, and the amount of effort that is going into making fusion a reality is very reassuring. It may take time, but fusion will happen, and it will happen within our lifetimes. That is why I write this. Because technology will give us the solution to this problem and that environmentalism as it stands is already gearing us up towards conflict over what dwindling resources remain. With techno-econo-enviromentalism (TEE) not only will the planet be saved from global warming, but everyone will have the chance at a good quality of life for themselves and their children.

or so I believe, but if you disagree, I’m always happy to rise to the debate.

[Delphic]

^^ I agree with Mad, Fusion is the way forward (and perhaps the Hydrogen Economy, although storing Hydrogen is quite expensive, I mean it's a proton and an electron, it can get out of pretty much any gap), I just hope that ITER (www.iter.org) works out as commericially viable, so the oil companies can smack all their cash into it.

I've got to say though, I don't think we've got a choice about getting away from Oil, until it becomes too expensive to extract the oil (i.e. the point where most oil wells require the oil sucking out, as opposed to it spurting out on it's own as it does for the first part of it's life) the oil companies are going to make us buy their oil, by buying up all the patents for alternative energy and not releasing them until they have made maximum profit because they are gits....

[marrow]

think you hit the nail on the head there, sci.
most people acknowledge the NEED to reduce resource usage, but nobody WANTS to be the ones to do so because it would lead to a lowering of the quality of life we have all become accustomed to. (myself included)0.0

[Tesseract]

^^ I agree with Mad, Fusion is the way forward (and perhaps the Hydrogen Economy, although storing Hydrogen is quite expensive, I mean it's a proton and an electron, it can get out of pretty much any gap), I just hope that ITER (www.iter.org) works out as commericially viable, so the oil companies can smack all their cash into it.

I've got to say though, I don't think we've got a choice about getting away from Oil, until it becomes too expensive to extract the oil (i.e. the point where most oil wells require the oil sucking out, as opposed to it spurting out on it's own as it does for the first part of it's life) the oil companies are going to make us buy their oil, by buying up all the patents for alternative energy and not releasing them until they have made maximum profit because they are gits....

actually shortage isn't as bad as it used to be since the price of gas is so high companies can now afford to do the process they are doing out in the oilfields on Alberta. They say there is enough oil there to supply north America for 20 years ( and there are more fields like it arou\nd the world that are capable), it's just a more expensive process of separating it. Alberta is now a province that is so rich that people that work at mcd's earn 20 bucks an hour and since it happened so fast the economy hasn't caught up so everybody there is rich....for now.

[Mad Scientist]

You are correct, there is still ALOT more oil and gas out there, and we've barely scratched the surface of the worlds coal deposits. The problem however is:

1. Our consumption of the stuff is increasing at an exponential rate. Demand WILL eventually outstrip supply, no questions asked. The only question is when, and will it be within our liftimes.

2. Although the oil is not running out as quck as many people say, the ability of the earths enviroment to absorb the waste produced from the combusion of it is. We NEED and alternative. As i have stated before, i beleif the most sensible alternative is to use nuclear fission as an economical band-aid, untill fusion is perfected.

Unfortunatly, i do not beleive the current methods of dealing with climate change are viable. They are trying to walk a line between the two methods that i outlined in my earlier post. Unfortuntatyl, this will not work. It's like betting equally on every horse to win a race. Overall, you will loose money. Sometimes, one has to gamble, because a chance of success is better than a certainty of failure.

And how would I place this bet? Very simply, yet somewhat controversially, i would totally eschew the conventional methods of conservation. Relax enviromental laws. Ignore international agreements. Increase productivity on a worldwide scale. It will worsen global warming, but this is the gamble, for the additional wealth must be placed into to main locations. These locations are reserves, and research.

The principle is simple: burn the economies hot. If you burn them hot enough, then with that wealth you may be able to pour enough int research to find technological solutions. A combination of nuclear fusion and high capacity batteries for electric cars (current batteries just arn't good enough) would cut greenhouse gas emmisions by about 70-80%. That is where the diverting funds into reserves comes in, because the very instance that we have a workable solution, we need the captal to instigate it immediatly.

And with this method, even if the solution comes too late, there would still be sufficent wealth in the system to mitigate some of global warming's worse effects.

[Raminator]

The principle is simple: burn the economies hot. If you burn them hot enough, then with that wealth you may be able to pour enough int research to find technological solutions.Herein lies the ultimate failing of this idea: the wealth won't go towards research and development, it will go towards lining corporate coffers. While I admit that it's probably the cynical socialist in me, I still don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that any other eventuality could take place because the stupid and the greedy are those who are in power.

[Delphic]

^^ seconded

[Mad Scientist]

Herein lies the ultimate failing of this idea: the wealth won't go towards research and development, it will go towards lining corporate coffers. While I admit that it's probably the cynical socialist in me, I still don't have enough faith in humanity to believe that any other eventuality could take place because the stupid and the greedy are those who are in power.

You are correct. That Idea was an idealistic principle. I claim it is what i think is neccisary to stop golobal warming, however, could it work in a practical sense? A bit doubtfull.

But only a bit.

I have a great deal of faith in humanity, and i do not beleive that such a death would ultimatly prevail in this system. Why? The very thing that you beleive will be its undoing - greed.

If the philosophy is sufficently inculcated in society that "we must stop climate change" then this theory becomes viable. The reasoning is simple, and hopefully not beyond those who have climbed to the top of the corporate ladders:

If global walming hits us, then we will loose alot of money.

If I am the one who controls the technologies that save us, then i will be in a far more powerfull position.

Therefore, it is in my intrest to invest in research, as if i don't, then i'm screwed either way (either by global warming, or by the people who DO discover the solution), whereas if i do invest, i have the potential to be top doggie.

Of course, as i have said, i have a great deal of faith in humanity. In the last few thousand years, humanity has grown from a handfull of primitive tribes, to a globe spanning civilisation with frightening technological resources at its disposal.

The fact that we got ourselves into this mess in the first places demonstraits that humanity has tremendous power. All we need to do is use it properly.

Whether we can or not, only time will tell.

[DarkFlood]

I agree with you mad sci, but if we had the technology then the companies will just bogart that too. For example, once we get hydrogen power, then water will become vastly expensive. Fusion works best, but that still has quite a bit to go before it is safe and effective.

[Mad Scientist]

Kindly define what you mean by the vague term "hydrogen power"? The term has so many different uses that without a clarification, i can think of three different things you could mean of the top of my head.

[Delphic]

then water will become vastly expensive.

You what? I think there's plenty of water to go around... You can use sea water to obtain the hydrogen you need to fuel things (presumably the electricity created by fusion would be how you'd extract the hydrogen (if we're talking hydrogen encomoy styley), so all I see happening is fuel and electricity prices being incredibly closely linked. No reason to assume that they'd become incredibly expensive though.

I'm intergued as to what exactly the 3 hydrogen powers are, I just presumed that you burn it in an extremely tightly sealed version of an internal combusion engine, or there those crazy fuel cell things (I think) but I have no idea how they work.

[OddFlame 2.0]

The hydrogen-powered cars that have already been created use salt water as their fuel and they exhaust ordinary water. A very good innovation.

[Ares]

As far as i can see the only viable option is nuclear. Thourgly nuclear.

Only problem I forsee with that is if something goes really wrong...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

[Mercer]

He just stated that nuclear power is very safe and that we can minimize the risks! And that is very true!

[zim]

I really think that a nuclear/wind power is the only solution to Global warming. Australia is taking a long time to do this because once only renewable energy is used, we will nolonger export coal and our GDP will go straight down.

[Delphic]

Fission Reactors don't go boom anymore because they are more intelligently designed... and Fusion Reactors CAN NOT go boom, they literally can't.

[TheTaxidermist]

Dennis Miller was on Jay Leno the other night preceding Al Gore. When asked if he believed in global warming he stated that there probably is something going on but then he referred to a science article from the 1970's that said the earth was going through a global cooling and that in order to right the changes some of the polar ice caps may have to be melted. In my opinion I think the earth is probably trying to balance itself out.

[Mercer]

The earth is always jumping from hot to cool, in fact we're in a cool period from after the last ice age, as in the past the earth has been much hotter.

[Kester]

The average temperature of the world, going back millions of years, is actually higher than our current average temperature. As stated above we are in a cool period, several degrees cooler than the 'base line'.

[Mad Scientist]

True, however, the concern not so much comes from that the earth's temperature is rising, but at the rates of change associated with it. You know, i think its time i explained this aspect of mathmatics, as it would make alot of future conversations easier if i have a nice benchmark explaining these principles. Therfore, its time for a...

:D MAD SCIENTIST SCIENCE LESSON:D

Todays lesson will be on basic differential calculus. Be warned that this post may contain maths. However, afterwards you can take comfort that you understand what people mean when they talk about calculus (if you don't already that is. I know some people here definatly do). If you are already familiar with differential calculus, then this post has little value to you.

Ok, i'm going to assume that people here understand the basic concepts of algebra. Namely, that you can replace a number with a letter, creating a general equation that works for all numbers Eg. we can say y=5x + 3. This means that if we take x to be 2 then y is 13 (5 multiplied by 2, plus three). Whats more, we can put lots of x numbers into this equation, and we get a string of y numbers out. We can even plot these numbers on a graph:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/5995/graph1wh8.jpg
If we want to find out the slope of the graph, we just look at the original equation. The slope or gradient of the graph is the number that we multiply the x by (or "coefficient of x" if you want to use the correct terminology). In this case the gradient is 5. If we didn't know what the equation was, we would pick two points on the line (it doesn't matter which, say (1,8) and (3,18)) and we would divide the difference in the y values by the difference in the x values ( 18-8/3-2=10/2=5. you can see this works).

Now, suppose we want to find the gradient of the graph of y=x^2 +3. (read as "y equals x squared plus 3"). The graph looks like this:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/8693/graph2ut1.jpg
We have a little problem, because the graph changes gradient depending on where you look at the graph. This is because it is a curve. If we take two values on the line, and try to divide the difference we wouldn't get the gradient of the line. We would get the gradient of a straight line that passed through those two points. If we took the two points shown in black on this next graph, and used the method above, we would find the gradient of the hypothetical pink line, rather than the blue one:
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/6159/graph3ex8.jpg
So we need a new method. And we can get this method by modfying the old one. ive already mentioned that the difference in y (hence i will refer to as diff y) divided by the difference in x (diff x) can deterimine the gradient of a straight line. Suppose we mark the two differences on a graph, as i have done in the graph above. The gradient is given by diffy/diffx. Now suppose that we choose different points on the blue line so that diff x is smaller. Consequently, diff y would be smaller as well:
http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/2372/graph4bx3.jpg
As you can see, the gradient of the new lines is getting steeper and steeper, untill the point that it becomes a tangent to the blue line (meaining it only touches the line at one point). Therefore, when the straight line becomes tangental, we have found the gradient at that point! This is effectivly when the difference in x goes to zero. This is formalised in a somewhat more complex equation,
http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/7/9/3/79326553f165d842ee09907269f04499.png

but what i have described above are the principles of it. at the end of the day, for any value of x, that is raised by a power to differentiate it, you simply lower the power by one, and multiply the expression by the new power. In the above equation, the derivative is 2x. This means that if you pick a point on the line, then the gradient at that point is simply twice the x value of that point. More complex equations give more complex derivatives, and so forth.

Well, you now have at least a basic understanding of differential calculus. Whats more, you are probably wondering why the hell i have brought this up in a discussion about climate change. The answer is fairly simple. A gradient is a rate of change. If i plotted the speed of a car against the time of that car on a graph, then at any point on that graph, the graident would be the rate that the car is accelerating at. Differential calculus allows us to examine the rate of change of a phenomena. If we differentiate that gradient that we get, we can deteriment the rate of change of the rate of change. With differential analysis, we can carfully examine the varying rates of change of a phenomena, and judge whether a change is slowing down, or speeding up.

As for how this relates to climate change, it will have to wait. I have a lot of data bout climate change with me, and i'll do a simple differential analysis on it a bit later, and show you why scientists say there is cause for concern.

[Collision]

I have just a have a few things to say that arent that big.

1. Its getting warmer, get used to it.
2. Our bodies will adapt to it, no big deal.

[Kester]

That has never been the issue col, the issue it the effect it will have on other species and land that is reclaimed by the sea, causing mass relocation.

[DKR1138]

Isn't 90% of the worlds ice underwater anyways already claiming its mass under water, is that other 10% going to increase the water level that much, and if the caps to melt, wouldn't that eventually cause an Ice age?

[Kester]

Plus the fact that water actually expands when it freezes, therefore taking up more space underwater when it is frozen then when it is in liquid form.

That's something that has always bugged me about this whole thing.

[Tesseract]

Isn't 90% of the worlds ice underwater anyways already claiming its mass under water, is that other 10% going to increase the water level that much, and if the caps to melt, wouldn't that eventually cause an Ice age?

Haha, I said that exact thing a couple of pages ago in a joking tone. I think there is some flawed logic going on....

[Dr.Aaron]

Blooody hell it's taking effect all right, it's just been raining ALL day, although we see rain often in England it's never that much. :P And what the hell happend to the WARMING part of global warming? It's still bloody cold...

[Tesseract]

that's the thing. Global warming is going to lead to the next ice age. wrap your head around that.

[natedgreat3]

or see The Day After Tomorrow

[Tesseract]

that movie is hodgepodge of conflicting theories. none of it makes any sense when compared with other parts of the movie.

[CUatTHEFINISH]

Yep, that pretty much sums up the movie industry. And they blame piracy for the lack of box office sales -_-.

Anywho; My parents are going to rent that Al Gore movie. Maybe I'll get around to watching that sometime. As for global warming, it is indeed real and I hate the money fueled business initiatives that back corrupt politicians to say otherwise.

I would really enjoy a presidential candidate that just spoke the truth. I'm not asking for "Man of the Year", but at least something closer than what we [US citizens] have -_-.

[TheTaxidermist]

I think it's real but I'm not so sure it's going to have as big of an effect as they say. They said that the increase in hurricanes was a result of global warming but where were the hurricanes this year? I still say it's the earth performing a balancing work.

[rtanger]

I would really enjoy a presidential candidate that just spoke the truth. I'm not asking for "Man of the Year", but at least something closer than what we [US citizens] have -_-.


We all know that the people in charge of the president would never let that happen. The government as we know it, the top of the chain?

Yeah, right.....

/conspiracy nut

I'm not set to buy into gloabal warming in it's entirety, but there is most certainly a signifigant warming trend, along with increased drought through my neck of the woods. It is, of course, a completely natural cycle, and that's something that's been reiterated several times over in this thread. Which I'm reiterating again right now...

[Mercer]

Yes it is a natural cycle, but this cycle takes many, many, many, many, many years to compelete, so, to us, our "normal" temperature is changing too much. Well, it's bound to and some point and we have little control. Even, if CO2 is the problem, we are just going to end up with the same result

[Collision]

Plus the fact that water actually expands when it freezes, therefore taking up more space underwater when it is frozen then when it is in liquid form.

Excuse me0.0

I may not have been top student in chemistry, but I did pass, but simple laws of chemistry is when something freezes that atoms bunch together making it smaller, Ice is the prime example used in chemistry books to support this.

[Kester]

Well you missed the point where you are taught water is the exception to this. While almost everything reduces in size when changing from liquid to solid, water takes up more space.

Ever notice your ice cubes in your ice cube tray are always bigger than the amount of water you put in the tray?

[Mad Scientist]

This man speaks the truth. Altough the rule put forth by collision is nearly always correct, there is an exception in water. This is actually doe to the relative strenghts of bonds in a phenomena present in water called "hydrogen bonding".

[rtanger]

There's a really simple experiemnt to prove it.
Put a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid filled to the brim with water, into the freezer.

Observe what happens.

[Tesseract]

Water is a strange thing...it has all sorts interesting properties. such as having a freezing point of zero Celsius but remaining frozen at 4 Celsius.

[Kaze]

Water is a strange thing...it has all sorts interesting properties. such as having a freezing point of zero Celsius but remaining frozen at 4 Celsius.

Barometric pressure, my dear.

[Tesseract]

it also has to do with the maximum density of water being 4 degrees celsius causing it to remain solid even at 4.