Posted on 12/13/2002 10:21:33 AM PST by ancient_geezer
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:35:18 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
No treaty will prevent global warming, says a key scientist who believes manmade climate change is happening. That's bad news for the United Nations' bureaucrats who are meeting in New Dehli to conclude a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Global-scale nuclear power from fission isn't a solution for energy needs as there's only a 30-year supply of uranium for fuel -- "hardly a basis for energy policy," according to Wigley et al.
Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse
Just how much of the "Greenhouse Effect" is caused by human activity?
It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account-- about 5.53%, if not.
This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn't factored into an analysis of Earth's greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.
Why wouldn't water vapor be counted as a green house gas?
Counting water vapor as a greenhouse gas throws the IPPC's global warming caused by human activity theory into the trash can. IPPC tries to treat CO2 as the primary causitive(i.e. forcing) agent of climate temperture variation with watervapor being an effect of CO2 induced heating. CO2 is the tail wagging the dog and butterfly causing the hurricane.
Problem is the models fail to reflect what actually is happening in the atmosphere and fail miserably in "predicting" even past climate events, much less future ones.
Based on the article, I computed the area of a solar array in outer space that would generate all the current US energy, from the sun: 108 miles in diameter.
How much energy does it take to create such an array and place it in orbit. From what I understand, the energy required to make such an array exceeds the expected total cummulative output from it.
No, Standard Operating Procedure for moral relativists. In this instance relativism and equivalency lay at the very root of their position, and becomes almost an imperative for them to take the position they do.
The "Big Lie" works, unfortunately.
This "old wives tale" keeps circulating, but I have NEVER seen any validated calculations/references proving it,and in fact have seen a couple of articles DISPROVING it. MAYBE if you assume all the solar cells are diamond cut from boule-grown crystalline silicon, this would be true--but there are far more energy-efficient ways of fabricating solar cells today.
There is a long way to go to get such a technology to work, assuming(a big if)it is practically feasible to do so.
The study I am referring to was not for space-based solar cells, but earth-based arrays. The study (which was in a peer-reviewed journal)did a complete energy cycle analysis assuming a complete solar array production facility running only on energy produced from solar cells, and calculated the "breeder cycle efficiency" which was positive. This was back in the mid-1980's, so the numbers would be significantly better today, given the more energy-efficient production processes not available back then.
Earth-based solar arrays are certainly practical--more expensive than nuclear, to be sure, but there are no technological barriers to building them. Compared to the amount of desert land in the United States, the fraction of such land necessary to provide the entire energy needs of the US (NOT just electrical power) is small.
What impact, if any, does a big heatsink in the desert(e.g. solar energy array) have on climate patterns? What impact does the conversion of electical energy transfered to the atmospher in the form of atmospheric heat, have upon the climate, in lieu of fossil fuel burning which tend to lock up heat in the formation of CO2 & water vapor.
What would the net change to the earths heat balance, and its consequent effect on climate in going to a solar only solution?
"Scientist" ain't one of them.
That's part of it. Although it won't matter to global warming at all. Once the power is generated in space, use it in space for the big power-using industries - steel and aluminum. All in space. Our power demand on the surface will be lessened. Again, nothing to do with global warming, but it would ease the grid usage some.
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