183 replies to this topic

[Dauth]

Ok, I am a scientist and there is something I don't know, so I'm doing a bit of research. What solutions are there to the problem of global warming (given that the globe is warming up and it is the fault of humantiy, beyond the norms of temperature change in recent history)?

I don't want dogmatic preachings I want an actual sceintifically viable solution.

Well?

[G-sus]

well there kinda is a problem, you cant produce cold.
all you can do is move the heat (which causes heat normally too, cuz no machine works at 100% efficiency), but where to move?
there may be a solution by shielding a part of the solar radiation from earth for some time, but that´s not only damn difficult, but also a major trouble too, cuz then we (and all plants, animals and other stuff) will recieve less energy.
which will force us to produce more energy by burning stuff, which will produce more heat...
so all in all, i doubt that there is any solution.

[Foxhound]

See my sig.

But in all seriousness, what could you do, really? If you tried to take something from one of the colder parts of earth (to be simple, a big hunk of ice) that would merely increase the temperature of the region and sooner or later, everything else. Like G-Sus said, if we try to cool things off in the ways we know how, we just create more heat.

[Shirou]

Everything creates heat, yet the amount of heat we receive through the sun, and then radiate back, is quite immense. A small alteration in the concentrations of the atmosphere changes the values at which infrared and other types of electromagnetic radiation are absorbed and/or radiated back into space. We now absorb more than we send back, which increases the overall temperature. Yet, the laws of thermodynamics state that when things get warmer, (or, more kinetic energy within the molecules) they also radiate more out. Also with more gasses the albedo, (level of reflection) of the atmosphere may one time get very high because of the increasing values of condensed water in the atmosphere. I know it's farfetched, but eventually a new balance will establish. In worst cases that may be five degrees higher than current worldwide temperature, which would, according to all those scientists, result in major chaos. In my belief nature will always create new balances. However the world five degrees warmer would be so much different. The course taken to this ''new'' balance would naturally be one of, drastic changes. The chaos of our world.

Ontopic, solutions? Things are still too unpredictable. All we can do is try to minimize the causes of the global warming. Other creative projects are noble, but are deemed to fail when we don't know what we are doing/dealing with.

Edited by Aftershock, 21 February 2008 - 16:55.

[Kris]

1: Plant craploads of trees to the ruined rainforests or right in your front or backyard.
2: Stop relying on powerplants and get solar panels and wind turbines.
3: Stop driving and Get a bike.
4: Go back to Horses and Carriages.
5: Use stairs on a 50 story building to save tons of energy that powers the elevator.

[ssj1-goku]

wait for the ice age?

[Dauth]

Chris, on 21 Feb 2008, 17:01, said:

1: Plant craploads of trees to the ruined rainforests or right in your front or backyard.
2: Stop relying on powerplants and get solar panels and wind turbines.
3: Stop driving and Get a bike.
4: Go back to Horses and Carriages.
5: Use stairs on a 50 story building to save tons of energy that powers the elevator.

1) Yes, lets flood the atmosphere with oxygen (this won't at all cause flash fires)
2) Both are too unrelilable to work
3) I have a bike, but 80 miles is a bit too far to ride when I want to visit home
4) Yes because they can shift 40ton of material so effectivly
5) Yea I can see fat buisnessmen doing this

And at topic, I know the rules of thermodynamics.

So from the last 24 hrs the only solutions I have heard that would work are:
Kill almost the entire human population...(Don't see this happening)

[G-sus]

hey dauth, lets stop global warming with your suggestion...
its sure very more easy to find a plan for that than any other plan to stop global warming...

[Wizard]

If you want a solution then we need to begin the transition to renewal energy sources now. True Solar/wind/etc is not effective atm. That's because the demand is pathetic and no one is investing in making it more cost effective or efficent. However the single most useful tactic in helping to reduce global warming is to reduce the amount of unessecary conusmption we have. I for one don't need to have 3 layers of wrapping on my Jammy Dodgers. Stop producing excessive amounts of chemical based vanity products. Find a more useful way of recycling bio matter than just dumping it in a whole in the ground with non-biodegradable sludge.

There is no single answer. It must be a combination of hundreds of things, but principally it's our culture of consumption that MUST change first.

[Dauth]

Renewable sources cannot be used as a baseline nor can they be used to work for peak demand.

Imagine using a wind source as the baseline power, and the winds drops, each hospital now had to run on its own generator to prevent life support machines stopping. The only use of wind I can see is to turn a gravity fed Hydroelectric plant into a battery but using wind power to pump water back upstream, and the inefficienies are immense.

I would vote for incinerators for all non-renewable waste however the waste produced recycling some materials is worse than the waste produced obtaining fresh materials. And incinerators produce a lot of aersol products which cause clouds to form and increase the albedo which heats up the Earth.

Change humanity for the better? I've heard that somewhere before, ahh yes Stalin. Education should work, but since it's been piped down my throat for the last two decades all they've produced is a cynic.

[UnderFlow]

I'd like to throw another question into this discussion: is it necessary to stop global warming in the first place?
In the history of the earth there have been lots of climate changes (IIRC it was possible to grow corn in Skandinavia in ancient times).
Only this time, the reasons are man-made.

I agree that we should not support the global warming carelessly, but on the other hand this is one of mankinds minor problems.

[Dauth]

My question was made under the assumption that we had to stop it, it's not an assumption I believe but this is merely to give rise to a thought I had, which is the greens have no ideas, they just don't like progress.

[Wizard]

I think the point I was making was that technologically we haven't got a response to the assumed fact that GW has to stop. But more along the lines that in order to produce one we must change cultural attitudes first to generate the need for scientific change. I wouldn't have the foggiest where to look in science to prevent global warming. IN FACT it's science and the application of science to industry that has caused it in the first place.

[Dauth]

Yet every proposal would drag industralised nations back to the dark ages, or just shunt the problem back ten years,

come on people this is your oppotunity to earn some credibility for any green I'm going to meet, otherwise this question will keep popping up.

[Shirou]

Invent Nuclear Fusion Reactors, which puts the ball at people like you dauth

Greens can shout a lot, but only the above is a viable solution now.

To stop global warming. Yea sure ofcourse, not gonna happen. Oil = money, Oil = all the money in the world. No way people are going to stop burning fossils until every single drop of oil is out of our soils. And we have a super hot planet in which the pandemonium of our climate is killing society.

Edited by Aftershock, 02 March 2008 - 11:14.

[Dauth]

None of the fusion reactors are efficient yet, I think one has managed about 3 seconds (being generous) of more power out than power in, so we have Kill people and wait for scientists to fix it?

[smooder]

Chris, on 21 Feb 2008, 17:01, said:

1: Plant craploads of trees to the ruined rainforests or right in your front or backyard.
2: Stop relying on powerplants and get solar panels and wind turbines.
3: Stop driving and Get a bike.
4: Go back to Horses and Carriages.
5: Use stairs on a 50 story building to save tons of energy that powers the elevator.

6. Hydrogen Powered Cars
7. More efficient technology.


Its not like we cant do most of these... Its just human greed stopping us from planting more trees and building more wind and solar turbines, because it is cheaper to build a coal plant to cough all over us just to save our already strong economies.
This is the thing about people in our age anyway, we dont like change.
Well if we dont make change theres gonna be one hell of a change to the climate and geography of our world.

I'm sure that the G8, The EU, The USA, NATO, China, Russia, India and Brazil can do something about this, but they just wont. And theres nothing we can do about it.


And building more nuke reactors is just shifting the problem of climate change to an equally dangerous one, radiation frying us.

EDIT: Dont get me wrong, I like my Ferraris and Lambos, my air conditioning in summer, my heating in winter and my nice hot water, but the solution isnt to cut back on something, its to build more of something else, and make things more eficient.

Edited by smooder, 02 March 2008 - 11:24.

[Shirou]

There aint no hydrogen on this planet (in pure form). You will have to create it from water, which requires energy. (going by the laws of thermodynamics, you add chemical energy to the hydrogen). With oil the energy was already in and you could just get it out of the ground, but with water... you have to put it in..

How we are going to do that, where you are going to get the energy. Fusion is again the only answer.

[Reaper94]

Chris, on 21 Feb 2008, 17:01, said:

3: Stop driving and Get a bike.

motorbike or pushbike? ^_^

i has both

ts happening but its fear mongering, were over-reacting, stop running around like headless fucking chickens, the government need to calm down and stop living our lives for us and let us live how we want to. Use motorbikes, smalelr engines, cheaper, faster, more fun

i cant go one day without having "

Quote

THE EARTH IS DEAD WE'RE LEET UBER HAX TO STILL BE ALIVE THRU ALL THE CARBO MONOGOCIDICAL BLAH BLAH BLAH

" rammed down my throat

[nova]

well since you cant produce cold you can only move heat and since heats energy why don't you just convert it into another form of energy like electricity

Edited by nova, 02 March 2008 - 22:19.

[Jok3r]

What?
~SLG

[CommanderJB]

Quote

If you want a solution then we need to begin the transition to renewal energy sources now. True Solar/wind/etc is not effective atm. That's because the demand is pathetic and no one is investing in making it more cost effective or efficent. However the single most useful tactic in helping to reduce global warming is to reduce the amount of unessecary conusmption we have. I for one don't need to have 3 layers of wrapping on my Jammy Dodgers. Stop producing excessive amounts of chemical based vanity products. Find a more useful way of recycling bio matter than just dumping it in a whole in the ground with non-biodegradable sludge.

There is no single answer. It must be a combination of hundreds of things, but principally it's our culture of consumption that MUST change first.

This is about the most reasonable and realistic viewpoint that I have seen in almost any discussion of the climate change debate. It's our culture that's got to change, but then it's going to (for the worse if we don't do it ourselves) whether we want it to or not when we run out of key resources in the next hundred years (Google 'Hubbert's Peak', or better find a recording of the incredible documentary 'Crude Impact' and watch that for more).

The problem is that climate change has already begun, and unless we can actively revert the atmosphere to it's previous state we can't stop it. But not only are we not going reverse it, without a global energy revolution in the next thirty or forty years it's going to speed up beyond control. China increased the size of it's entire economy by a full 50% in 2005 and is not slowing down one iota. India is hot on its heels, and both countries have as many people as most of the current 1st-world Western countries combined. And all that growth requires power. Lots of power. And 99% of that power is coming from brown-coal fossil fuels, much of it, I am ashamed to say, supplied from my own country.

However, one interesting fact that I saw on a David Attenborough natural history documentary was that mid-ocean algal blooms can produce convert as much CO2 to O2 as all the world's forests combined over the same period. With this is mind, it has occurred to me more than once that if we can mobilise enough equipment (which we theoretically can - there's no limit to what humans can do if they actually pull together, after all, but getting that to happen is nigh on impossible without large-scale conflict) then helping the formation of such blooms could possibly give us some breathing space in which to change our culture of consumption and our energy generation methods. In the mean-time, renewables must become more prevalent and generation must become more decentralised.
Well, I've had my say. That speech will change the world I'm sure. But really, who can tell what the future may bring?

[Rich19]

I believe some solutions being tried are compression of greenhouse gasses emitted by power plants, and storage underground; or use as fuel. One of the most recent New Scientists has an article on CO2 as a fuel, IIRC.

[Sgt. Rho]

co2? as fuel? how? If co2 is what burned fuel ends up as

[Dauth]

C02 will not burn in the presence of oxygen alone, however you could in theory strip the oxygen from the carbon and react that with another substance, leaving that oxidised and the carbon in its pure form.