Is global warming/climate change a crock?

The suns radiation is increasing to a solar maximum in 2011. It was on perfect disaster a few months back about a potentially devastating solar storm

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Originally Posted by Captain VXR

The suns radiation is increasing to a solar maximum in 2011. It was on perfect disaster a few months back about a potentially devastating solar storm

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See that's the thing. It was said before that solar irradiation was not high and then a program says it is? Who is correct?

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Originally Posted by Daniel

See that's the thing. It was said before that solar irradiation was not high and then a program says it is? Who is correct?

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Solar radiation is high but so are greenhouse gases. According to the models greenhouse gases are having significantly more of an effect at the present time. Anything that gets brought up on a forum or a TV programme has already been considered by climatologists.

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Originally Posted by Daniel

Congratulations tidal power is different to wind power.

Post 118 I said that the Gwynt y mor wind farm will not impact food production (you said it would), that the wind supply is not as variable as you said it was and you said it was noisy (it isn't)

Post 119 - You agreed with me but stated that it's not the correct solution for the whole of Europe and mentioned that not all of Europe is like North Wales. Funny that!

Post 120 - I stated that in addition you could have tidal power and that by themselves the gwynt y more turbines will generate 40% of the household power needed for Wales and said that Wales is not densely populated. On looking at the statistics it's actually more densely populated than Europe on average.

Post 124 - Some sort of magic mushroom slipped into your tea and the hallucinogenic effects caused you to imagine that I was comparing wind power and tidal power in some way which I never did.

I never took offense to it by saying that tidal power isn't obtrusive. I merely stated that I live near a freaking windfarm and it doesn't dominate the freaking scenery and it isn't freaking noisy.

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I think you've proven my point that you didn't read my posts properly.

In post 117 paragraph 1 I was referring to renewable energy resources in general. Since you're clearly interested in this topic I'm sure you understand that biofuels such as oilseed rape are the most important renewable energy resource. Tidal/wind are nowhere near as significant globally. Hence my point about the impact on food production (of course I'm assuming you know the controversy about third world countries switching land from food to energy source production).

In paragraph 2 I then referred to local opposition to the presence of wind turbines as a subtype of renewable energy sources. Hence your point in 118 regarding food production was irrelevant. I never claimed that wind turbines would significantly impact food production but renewable sources in general would.

Regarding your last paragraph, that is YOUR opinion. Plenty of people disagree which is why websites such as the one you posted were made.

Would you still be so pro-wind turbines in your area if you realised that their presence would cut the value of your house by several percent, the same as that of living near an airport? YOU may not mind them but plenty of people do.

I'm finding this exchange rather tedious and your inability to understand rather clear posts painful to watch. There won't be any further responses from me on this matter.

Andrew, fusion power seems to be the answer to all our prayers, its such a pity that it keeps being delayed by new problems encountered in its development.

Renewable biofuels means more farmland, which if I understand a previous post, increases methane, a greenhouse gas while at the same time increasing the starvation rates because we're growing fuel, not food, so the populations would drop thereby also having the effect of lowered emissions due to fewer people.

Yeah, could work.

Nature, nature.

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

Nuclear to me seems to be the way ahead, it is safe in properly designed and maintained reactors and is zero emissions, silent and relatively compact. Its a pity that the green groups have helped give nuclear power such a bad name that many people dismiss it out of hand.

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I very much agree. Given that this view is largely based on a 20-plus-year-old accident in the Soviet Union, it doesn't exactly bear up to much scrutiny in the West today.

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Originally Posted by race aficionado

I don't have a link to reference this to but I have read and heard that we are not even aware of how much damage nuclear energy pollution does to our planet and to our health.
It is said that mental deseases, alzheimers for example, are on the rise because of levels of radioactivity that our 'geiger" detectors can't even sense and that are out there creating havoc.

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Well, someone had better come up with some proof of this damn quick if they have any. It's not as if scientists haven't had the time to examine this one over the years.

Personally — and this is similar to my view on global warming, in that I have an opinion but am no scientist — I have my doubts as to the veracity of such claims.

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Originally Posted by Dylan H

You've answered the points you've raised in your own post. Supplying electricity to 40% of a sparsely populated area is vastly different to supplying the Ruhr or London.

Also tidal power is not the same as wind power so the comparison is irrelevant.

Human nature being what it is, if you build wind turbines on or near land you WILL get opposition from NIMBY parties. That is going to be a major limiting factor with wind power whether you like it or not.

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I know only two things about windpower. One is that it can never be enough to meet our energy needs. The other is that it is an anagram of 'downwiper'.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I very much agree. Given that this view is largely based on a 20-plus-year-old accident in the Soviet Union, it doesn't exactly bear up to much scrutiny in the West today.

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Do I remember reading somewhere that the technology used in the Soviet reactor was considered risky and not used in the west?

Duh, came from work to find several more pages in this thread. Good stuff, by the way :up:

So, I'll depart a little from the current subtopic (you Europeans are sleeping, anyway ;) ) and I'll say this: the thing that puzzles me the most about the "consensus" on GW is the catastrophes predicted. One has to deduce from that, that warming of the planet is a bad thing (hard to convince me, when we get -40 in the Winter here ;) ); in any case, does that mean that global cooling would be a good thing? Or, does that mean that the current temperatures are "perfect". I stuggle with that :confused: