The Answer to Global warming is trains,Wind and Solar farms.

[palerider]

Well.... Since this whole thread started out about global warming, and there has been a great deal of information about heating/cooling events and discussion about whether the current warming trend is man-made, I thought I'd add this link: Fossil DNA Proves Greenland Once Had Lush Forests

Lots of information about ice core drillings, comparrisons, etc. Methodology applied. 450,000 year old insect DNA. (OLD bugs!)

Near the end of the article this quasi-summary paragraph:

"That signifies that there was ice there during the Eemian interglacial period 125,000 years ago. It means that although we are now confronted with global warming, the whole ice sheet will not melt and bring about the tremendous sea-level rises which have been the subject of so much discussion."

It's a BAAAADDDD day for Al Gore & company...

The fact is, with regard to sea level change, is that since the glaciers began to melt back from most of the northern hemisphere some 120,000 years ago, sea level has risen 900 feet and we are moving towards a mean global temperature that will be so warm that no ice will exist at either pole. For the vast majority of earth's history, there has been no ice at one, or both of the poles. Ice on earth is the anomoly, not the norm.

 

[TruthAboveAll]

The fact is, with regard to sea level change, is that since the glaciers began to melt back from most of the northern hemisphere some 120,000 years ago, sea level has risen 900 feet and we are moving towards a mean global temperature that will be so warm that no ice will exist at either pole. For the vast majority of earth's history, there has been no ice at one, or both of the poles. Ice on earth is the anomoly, not the norm.

Agreed. In general, anyway. I'm not altogether sure that ice is an anomaly and not the norm, but from what I've seen the opinions are so varied, and since no one bothered to invent consistent record keeping at least until humans showed up, I think it's safe to say that there has been some wide fluctuations.

There is also continental drift, the possibility of earthquakes, volcanoes, even meteoric activity influencing the geographical structure we are familiar with today. Lots of possibilities, no way to know for sure.

Again, agreed though. Since I believe that God is ultimately in control of the whole thing, and I believe that he never says "Oops!" it's highly unlikely that man, no matter how arrogant some of us want to be about it, can have much of an impact on much of anything.

It's like your house. You buy it or build it. You put the furnishings in it. You live in it. And you should be responsible to keep it maintained and clean. But it certainly doesn't mean you can't wear your shoes on the carpet, or stink up the kitchen frying fish.

 

[palerider]

Agreed. In general, anyway. I'm not altogether sure that ice is an anomaly and not the norm, but from what I've seen the opinions are so varied, and since no one bothered to invent consistent record keeping at least until humans showed up, I think it's safe to say that there has been some wide fluctuations.

Here is a simple, but accurate, chart that shows the mean temperature over the history of the earth. Very little ice could exist anywhere when the global mean rises to 16 to 18C and clearly, for most of earth's history, it has been warmer than 18C.

 

[steveox]

Then Explan this graph chart over 1000 years

 

[palerider]

Then Explan this graph chart over 1000 years

That is the infamous "hockey stick" steve. It has been thoroughly discredited. That chart isn't worth the band width it took for you to post it. The hockey stick completely ignores the medieval warm period of which we now have DNA evidence from the greenland ice cap.

I hope you weren't trying to compare your graph to the one that I posted steve. In case you didn't notice, the scale of mine is in millions of years while yours is in years. Even if yours hadn't been completely discredited, they are showing two entirely different things.

 

[steveox]

Global Warming is Very Real. Im Sorry but Al Gores theory is right unless we find a way to reverse global warming into Global Cooling.

 

[palerider]

Global Warming is Very Real. Im Sorry but Al Gores theory is right unless we find a way to reverse global warming into Global Cooling.

Algore is an idiot. It is true that global warming is real. It is false that we are causing it. Steve, we can't stop a huricaine. We can't stop a tornado. We can't stop an el nino. Hell steve, we can't even stop a summer shower from falling on your back yard cookout. The very idea that we can stop, slow down, speed up, or have any other effect on the global climate is patently rediculous and that you and others believe it is testament to the fact that there is one born every minute.

 

[steveox]

Algore is an idiot. It is true that global warming is real. It is false that we are causing it. Steve, we can't stop a huricaine. We can't stop a tornado. We can't stop an el nino. Hell steve, we can't even stop a summer shower from falling on your back yard cookout. The very idea that we can stop, slow down, speed up, or have any other effect on the global climate is patently rediculous and that you and others believe it is testament to the fact that there is one born every minute.

We can reduce a hurricane. But the EPA and the evonmentalist wont allow the scientist to do it.

 

[9sublime]

Do you really believe that all these dirty fossil fuels we are pumping into the planet... 6 billion people doing it, is not doing anything at all Palerider?

 

[palerider]

We can reduce a hurricane. But the EPA and the evonmentalist wont allow the scientist to do it.

I posted information on that already. Didn't you read it or was it too complicated for you?

http://www.prh.noaa.gov/cphc/pages/F...ifications.php

Clip:

One of the biggest problems is, however, that it would take a LOT of the stuff to even hope to have an impact. 2 cm of rain falling over 1 square kilometer of surface deposits 20,000 metric tons of water. At the 2000-to-one ratio that the "Dyn-O-Gel" folks advertise, each square km would require 10 tons of goop. If we take the eye to be 20 km in diameter surrounded by a 20 km thick eyewall, that's 3,769.91 square kilometers, requiring 37,699.1 tons of "Dyn-O-Gel". A C-5A heavy-lift transport airplane can carry a 100 ton payload. So that treating the eyewall would require 377 sorties. A typical average reflectivity in the eyewall is about 40 dB(Z), which works out to 1.3 cm/hr rain rate. Thus to keep the eyewall doped up, you'd need to deliver this much "Dyn-O-Gel" every hour-and-a-half or so.

This is saying that in order to have even a minor impact on a hurricaine, we would have to fly 377 C5-A aircraft (one of the largest transports in existence) to the storm every hour and a half and each one of them would have to dump 100 tons of the stuff. I suppose we could have a minor effect on a hurricaine by setting off a nuclear bomb in the eye as well but is the damage we would cause worth it?

 

[palerider]

Do you really believe that all these dirty fossil fuels we are pumping into the planet... 6 billion people doing it, is not doing anything at all Palerider?

No, I never said that. We are certainly polluting which is not a good thing and I am all for cleaning up. But we are not causing a global climate change. The fact is, that we simply can not enhance the greenhouse effect by producing more greenhouse gas. There is a saturation point with regard to green house gasses and the green house effect. That is, there is a point where more gasses don't enhance the greenhouse effect at all.

There has been three times as much greenhouse gass in the atmosphere as would be required to cause the current greenhouse effect since we began to exit the ice age we are presently exiting. There has never been a need for manmade greenhouse gas to increase the potential for greenhouse warming because the atmosphere is already completely opaque in the relevant absorption bands . That is, there is already a "competition" between overabundant greehnouse gass molecules to reflect the available outbound infrared radiation (greenhouse effect) . For this reason alone, the hysterics generated by climate models that predict catastrophic global climate change are laughable. The models have been programmed only with positive feedbacks. That is, they predict even greater warming from trivial increase in absorber (green house gass) availability while the real world potential actually works with negative feedback. You get progressively less warming per cc of greenhouse gas by adding more of them because there is simply not enough reflected radiation from the sun to go around. The fact is, sublime, that we would get an enhanced greenhouse effect by producing less greenhouse gasses.

 

[Pidgey]

Well, this certainly looks... lively.

As to the question of whether you can push something with a laser, it seems to me that there're errors on both sides of the aisle here. Yes, photons do appear to be able to exert some force (review a Crookes Radiometer) but I don't think it's a practical way of pushing a large mass. You'd get more actual lateral deflection from the body to be moved by way of possibly vaporizing some of the surface material, in effect creating thrust, than you would by the photonic pressure.

But, it's a completely useless argument when applied to a mass the size of a comet, as you simply can't transfer a significant enough quantity of energy to provide the required "work done". While originally solely for your entertainment dollar, a statement out of "Armageddon" would seem appropriate: "C'mon guys, that'd be like shootin' a freight train with a BB gun!" The only thing that the scientist(s) in question have to offer at this point is enough of an argument to wrangle a government grant so that they don't have to get a real job. Such grants are typically awarded, by the way, from politicians who really don't have a clue.

As to the content of this thread in particular, it's parallel to so many situations that you find in the workplace and life-in-general every day: fundamental emotional beliefs drive the rationales in dispute, and nobody's really willing to examine those first. It is what we hold most dear, the very definitions of ourselves, after all. The ultimate result of arguing from that basis is usually a standoff, with nothing really gained.

I guess I just woke up this morning looking to express myself somewhere as a complete pompous ass. Somebody please tell me I just succeeded...

 

[palerider]

Well, this certainly looks... lively.

As to the question of whether you can push something with a laser, it seems to me that there're errors on both sides of the aisle here. Yes, photons do appear to be able to exert some force (review a Crookes Radiometer) but I don't think it's a practical way of pushing a large mass. You'd get more actual lateral deflection from the body to be moved by way of possibly vaporizing some of the surface material, in effect creating thrust, than you would by the photonic pressure.

Crookes radiometer is not an example of photons exerting force. In a radiometer, the black side of the vane is hotter than the other side, as radiant energy from a light source warms the black side by black-body absorption faster than the lite side. The air molecules are "heated up" (i.e. experience an increase in their speed) when they touch the black side of the vane.

The internal temperature rises as the black vanes transfer heat to the air molecules (in a partial vaccum), but they are cooled again when they touch the bulb's glass surface which is at room temperature. Heat loss through the glass keeps the internal temperature of the radiometer at a (relative) constant so that the two sides of the vanes can develop a temperature difference. The white side of the vanes are slightly warmer than the internal air temperature but cooler than the black side, as some heat conducts through the fin from the black side.

If you have a total vaccum inside the glass, the blades won't spin because there are not enough air molecules to cause air currents to move the vanes whereas if photons were actually imparting pressure on the blades, it would spin faster in a hard vaccum than in a partial vaccum.

 

[Pidgey]

Sometimes, strict adherence to technicalities is counterintuitive in an argument, which is an attempt to persuade. There's truth, there's fact and then there's perception. Semantic barriers usually get in the way of communicating these things, seemingly as a rule.

Anyhow, by whatever mechanism, light causes the Crookes radiometer to spin. As you've noted, the Crookes radiometer is too blunt of an instrument to be accepted as proof for the concept of "radiation pressure". However, by hook or Crooke, the mass is affected, nonetheless. If you want to go looking for more detailed study on that, look into the Nichols Radiometer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichols_radiometer

and radiation pressure:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dujs/2002S/pressureoflight.pdf

But, it's still one heckuva'n exercise in futility to go shootin' a comet with a laser.

 

[Rokerijdude11]

agreed. And as you mentioned, it runs the risk of vaporizing or fracturing the object being moved. In the case of a large asteroid, i don't think thats practical either, but i wasn't really arguing that point of the story. Only the fact that lasers COULD move solid objects .

Particularly in a pulsed array set up.......which is what they say would be needed for a Large object, to POSSIBLY be moved, over a Fairly large amount of TIME........... making it at this time Unlikely that an asteroid could be Moved effectivly


as i say Palerider contended, that Lasers were incapable of moving any solid objects......I simply provided limited support documentation. To prove this was an incorrect theory that he was asserting upon Stevox and the rest of the readers

i see that you recognize the manner in which he has chosen to distort and misdirect

thanks for the refreshing post