Climate Change & Global Warming

[Medziotojas]

no need to line the pockets of the few at the expense of the rest of us

 

But isn't that exactly what's happening with the price of oil?

[ArabiaTerra]

50+ years of oil and gas left, ....

But this is the point I've been trying to make. We don't have 50 years. If we're lucky we might have 20 before the really bad effects start, and once they start it's too late.

[Carlos]

The current speculation that's apparent in the oil prices are one of the things predicted for when oil production levels out...... if they are willing to gamble their money on it, does it mean the market has accepted the peak oil scenario?

 

If that IS the future, then we do still have 50-70 years worth of oil left.... but current production will not be sustained, and the price of oil will go through the roof.....

 

OF course the market might be wrong, in which case you can win big time by gambling against rising prices on the futures market...........

[sheepshagger]

But this is the point I've been trying to make. We don't have 50 years. If we're lucky we might have 20 before the really bad effects start, and once they start it's too late.

 

And you know this AT? how? what qualification do you have to state what oil is still in shetlands territory. or have you just read some scaremongering twaddle on the internet and become an expert overnight.

 

FACT there is at least 50+ years of oil left in the waters around Shetland and that is just the proven reserves, we have only begun to scratch at the surface of the west side and that will prove to bea hell of a lot bigger than the companies are admitting at the moment.

 

There are wells in the east Shetland basin that according to the oil company operating them should have played out ten years ago, still producing and likely to produce for many years yet.

 

this as i said in my last post could provide free electricity to shetland for many years to come, by then I,m fairly sure that a nice clean vissully unobtrusive from of generating electric will be available to us so no need for a bloody great windfarm planted right smack bang on top of us.

 

your other point at about a windfarm built south needing to be twice the size well they have a hell of a lot more land than we do so a windfarm of that scale could easily be hidden away somewhere it will not spoil the scenery in the whole of Scotland just in a tiny little bit of it, and after all it is them that needs the power so let them deal with the windfarm not us

 

medz the price of oil is risisng not because a lack of oil but a percieved lack of oil, allowing market speculators to buy and sell a barrel of oil many times and for huge profit before it reaches any market.

 

AT stop the chicken licken act and concentrate on something you actually have a scooby doo about.

[ArabiaTerra]

You're missing my point completely SS (as usual ). I wasn't talking about the oil reserves, I was talking about climate change (this is the global warming thread, not the peak oil one, after all). It doesn't matter if there's a thousand years worth of oil left, we can't afford to burn it, and if we were to continue burning oil at present levels for another 50 years, we'd be screwed.

 

I can't tell you exactly what it would do to the weather because the computer models aren't that accurate yet, but it would melt the Greenland icecap. And that means a global seven meter rise in sea level.

 

We have to cut our use of all fossil fuels significantly in the next 20 years and look to eliminating their use within the next 50, globally, or we're, quite literally, sunk.

[Ghostrider]

I can't tell you exactly what it would do to the weather because the computer models aren't that accurate yet, but it would melt the Greenland icecap. And that means a global seven meter rise in sea level.

 

We have to cut our use of all fossil fuels significantly in the next 20 years and look to eliminating their use within the next 50, globally, or we're, quite literally, sunk.

 

....and the "proof" that this is an accurate forecast is??

[Fjool]

At Old Scatness today, they were of the opinion that Iron Age Shetland used to be two to three degrees warmer than today.

[ArabiaTerra]

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2008/08/01/changing-climate-could-lead-to-more-landslides-say-scientists/

 

See, I do know what I'm talking about.

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Regarding the article on peat slides in todays ST proves once again that ripping up Shetlands hills for the wind factory would be a totally IRRESPONSIBLE act of vandalism.

[ArabiaTerra]

I can't tell you exactly what it would do to the weather because the computer models aren't that accurate yet, but it would melt the Greenland icecap. And that means a global seven meter rise in sea level.

 

We have to cut our use of all fossil fuels significantly in the next 20 years and look to eliminating their use within the next 50, globally, or we're, quite literally, sunk.

 

....and the "proof" that this is an accurate forecast is??

You "prove" that tomorrows weather forecast is accurate before it happens and I'll answer your question.

 

It's a forecast, it can't be "proved". The business of scientific forecasting works in the real world, not some abstract mathematical one where things can be positively proved.

 

I'll try to explain my reasoning (puts on patronizing voice).

 

In the case of the Greenland icecap, the governing factor is not mainly temperature, it is altitude. As you can see by looking at pictures of mountains it gets colder the higher you go. The surface of the Greenland icecap is several thousand meters above sea level. This helps to keep it frozen. However, as it melts, the altitude of the surface of the icecap falls. At the moment if global warming were to be somehow halted, the Greenland icecap would recover back to its previous size, but there is a point where it falls below a certain height that the melting becomes irreversible even if Climate change were to be totally reversed. This point is unknown because it is constantly changing as the temperature increases due to global warming. Think of it as a graph, with one line representing the height of the ice cap which is heading diagonally downwards as the icecap melts. Another line is heading diagonally upwards plotting the temperature increase. The point where these two lines cross is the "tipping point" where the melting becomes irreversible.

 

You following this so far, GR?

 

The problem at the moment is that the two lines on the graph are not straight lines, they are curves and getting steeper as the temperature increase accelerates and the melting accelerates with it.

 

Now, it may take a couple of hundred years for the melting to take place and the full seven meters to affect us so it won't affect us personally but rather our grand children's children and grandchildren, but the cause of the melting is happening now and it is up to us to deal with it before the irreversible melting starts and most of Shetland drowns.

[Ghostrider]

http://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2008/08/01/changing-climate-could-lead-to-more-landslides-say-scientists/

 

See, I do know what I'm talking about.

 

Which is more than the "scientists" quoted in the report seem to be able to claim, there's an immense over-use of the terms "could" and "likely" going on there, with nothing being offered as supporting evidence.

 

I'm afraid until there is some actual evidence available for anyone interested to examine as they please, that provides some level of backup for these "scientists" predictions, this is the kind of pure guesswork "science" I file alongside that which gave us "the war will be over by Christmas" in 1914, and "the oil going through Sullom will have run out in 20 years" in 1978.

 

Male bovine excerment by the lorry load!

[ArabiaTerra]

Regarding the article on peat slides in todays ST proves once again that ripping up Shetlands hills for the wind factory would be a totally IRRESPONSIBLE act of vandalism.

 

I disagree, the amount of peat disturbed by the windfarm construction would be trivial compared to the amount which will be lost if we don't tackle climate change. The windfarm will disturb, at most, a few thousand tonnes of Peat out of the millions that cover Shetland. Climate change threatens all the peat, everywhere, whether by landslides or by slower degradation by being dried out every summer and soaked again every winter instead of being a stable waterlogged environment which is it's natural state.

 

In addition, if properly designed, the roads and drains which will be built to service the construction and running of the windfarm could well serve to stabilize and protect the peat from the landslide risk.

[ArabiaTerra]

I'm afraid until there is some actual evidence available for anyone interested to examine as they please....

So you're going to wait for more landslides to happen to "prove" that more landslides could happen?

 

I've been reading a book from back in the eighties about Nuclear holocaust called The Fate of the Earth. In it the author (Jonathon Schell) talks about the uncertainties of what the effects of a full scale nuclear exchange would actually be because it is so far outside of normal experience that it is unimaginable, but it is also unprovable as we cannot afford to do the required experiment (an actual nuclear holocaust) because we don't have a spare planet to do the experiment on.

 

A similar thing is happening with global warming, except we are conducting the experiment and we will have to live with the results, whatever they are. Can we afford to do this?

 

(PS. I heartily recommend this book to everyone, I think it's available on Amazon.)

[PJ of Hildisvik]

Far as i know they don't know what type of road will be suitable,

also when you extract a minimum of 1.5 million cubic metres of rock from 9 super quarries, over hills that have on average 2 metres of peat covering them, what happens to thousands of tons of that peat when it is removed???

[ArabiaTerra]

Far as i know they don't know what type of road will be suitable,

also when you extract a minimum of 1.5 million cubic metres of rock from 9 super quarries, over hills that have on average 2 metres of peat covering them, what happens to thousands of tons of that peat when it is removed???

 

You put it back in the quarries again once you've finished. Moving the peat won't destroy it, disturb it, yes, but it isn't going to evaporate into thin air. There will be some CO2 release due to the moving process but that will be quickly offset by the savings in fossil fuel burning due to the windfarm. I think the latest figures I saw were a 2-3 year payback time for the CO2 associated with the construction. (I haven't checked those figures, however, so I could be wrong)