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The Self-defeating nature of the Green movement

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Hmm, I looked at that Water Powered Car site but it's not really reassuring with its 'technology'.

If you look at that site they don't give an answer to the REALLY important question: "Were does the energy come from to electrolyse the water?".

They just don't give that answer and the reason is obvious: it would spoil the hoax. To electrolyse water you need energy. With electrolysis some of the energy is lost due to heat production. The same is true when you use the hydrogen fuel that comes from this electrolysis kit. In the end you loose energy with every step!

Of course they start with things like those "4 steps of scientist reactions" in the hope that people will buy into it. In the end they just want to sell you electrolysis and hydrogen boost kits for ridiculous prices.

This kind of people give science and common sense a bad name, its a shame.
 
I don't understand how electrolosis of h2o could be a viable source of energy... It requires more energy than is yielded to perform electrolosis. So... how does 2H2O -> H2 + O2 magically produce extra energy? And what energy do they use to perform the electrolosis?


"For all the Red voters who back the War President, let me ask you 2 questions? Who Would Jesus Bomb? Who would Jesus kill? 650,000 Iraqis?, because of one set-up bad evil dictator & and a group of religious militants?"
... huh? this does not have anything to do with the topic. I would take a Republican (except McCain) over those socialist faggots anyday. Vote Libertarian for both economic and civil freedoms. No need to pick the lesser of 2 evils. Pick who who WANT.



EDIT: i honestly did not know this had another page with a reply almost the same as mine. Well, I second it lol.
 
TrYpt / PhEnEtHyl -AMinE said:
Its come to my attention that many of the energy alternatives and biodegradable products pushed by eco-friendly organizations actually have one major downfall: they increase the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere which increases the rate of global warming. Where corn PLA resins reduce the amount of non-degradable plastics in land fills, the decomposition process of corn PLA produces carbon dioxide. And as for fuel alternatives, many of them, although from renewable resources, still release large amounts of carbon dioxide, for example, ethanol fuels for cars. Has anyone else noticed this strange antagonism that is present in trying to solve a variety of the problems facing the earth? It seems that in a lot of cases, what solves one environmental problem leads to another.
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Here's the difference. A product made from petroleum releases carbon into the atmosphere that had been locked under the earth from a very very long time ago when there was much more CO2 in the atmosphere and the climate was very different than today.

A 'biofuel' made from crops, on the other hand, only releases the carbon that the plant absorbed during it growth, and is therefore labelled 'carbon neutral' (assuming that renewable energy is used for its processing). The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere stays the same. Also, petroleum is apparently going to run out, and only certain countries have access, so developing alternatives is a necessity to sustain modern society.


It is true that biofuels are a stopgap until cleaner technologies like wind power and hopefully the hydrogen car take over. Alternative technologies used to be economically uncompetitive but this is beginning to change. A lot of environmentalists are actually dead against biofuels, because of the real risk of food shortages as farmers switch from food to fuel production.

There are other problems with plastics, such as toxic softening chemicals like bisphenol-A, which can leach into the food products they contain, one of the reasons why non-petroleum food packaging is a step in the right direction. Bisphenol A has now been banned in many countries (its effects interestingly are pretty much a who's who of Western health concerns) but can slip through the net due to globally outsourced manufacturing. It's not considered the only dubious softening chemical. There's the problem of the 'plastic island' floating in the Pacific and the gender bending consequences of fish eating this waste (and us eating the fish), as well as the toxicity of manufacturing PVC etc.

The Green movement is still in its infancy technology wise, since the idea of 'alternative technology' arose from the social dissatisfaction of the 1960s counterculture and the emerging spectre of climate change. Calculating which alternatives are the most 'green' can be very complicated, balancing social with ecological as well as the life cycle or footprint calculations alone, so I think it's unfair when people who are genuinely trying to help are lampooned by the public if they get it wrong. Of course, it's still very important than when they do get it wrong, the fault is identified and we move closer to a sustainable future. Within the Green movement alone, there are different factions, such as pro-technology, neo-Luddite, or the dreaded neo-liberal geo-engineers (shudders).

The climate is a chaotic system, and it is impossible to predict what's about to happen... the data governments rely on is 10 years out of date by the time they ever act on it, yet predictions seem to worsen on a yearly basis.

I recently read an article in New Scientist on hydrothermal carbonisation, a process inspired from the ancient Amazonian practice of 'slash and char' agriculture, which locks carbon in the soil and makes it more fertile and self-renewing in the process. I think carbon sink technology is our only hope. This black earth can still be found in the Amazon (the natives lost the knowledge long ago, and it is thought that the arrival of the Spanish and the unpredictability and disease that that brought led to the change to 'slash and burn'). :(


imachavel said:
I bet tons of people knew the world was round when everyone thought it was fuckin flat.
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I'm pretty sure you're right. I can't remember sources but I've watched documentaries from reasonably reputable sources that claim to expose the 'the earth is flat' story as a historical myth, and I believe they're right.

Sinewave said:
One of my ultimate goals is to have an off-grid house with subsistence permaculture. This ensures a much greater degree of immunity to bull-shit geopolitical happenings.
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A great goal Sinewave, and one I share! I'm sure you're aware of these books, but here they are just in case, for you and anyone else dreaming of the good life. I used to go out with a girls whose Dad participated in the government LSD trials in the 60s- he now lives on his own little smallholding with a goat and a well (he refuses to drink tap water because he says the government put mind-control chemicals in it!).

The Complete Book of Self Sufficiency, John Seymour, 1976 (the older ones have better pictures than the modern reprint)

For construction (and nice intro on the holistic, philosophical side of alternative technology):
The New Autonomous House, Brenda and Robert Vale, Thanes and Hudson, 2002

Outdated in parts but some nice DIY ideas:
Radical Technology, Godfrey Boyle and Peter Harper ed., Wildwood House, 1976
 
More self-defeating is the preachiness and doomsmongering of some Greens, which puts off those in the mainstream who view them as they would a fanatical Christian banging on about going to hell. That is a bigger problem.
 
Yes indeed. There is this obsession with SIN, that's rooted very deep in our culture and it only stops any real development.
I would say we should be more ambitious. Like in the 2nd world war when the americans brought toghether the greatest scientists of that time, somewhere in the midle of the desert, to have them making an atomic bomb. We could do something similar right now, inventing a nuclear fusion reactor. It would solve the world energy problem and therefore the water-shortage as well, because if you have this abundance of cheap, clean electricity, you can easily make tapwater out of seawater. And if we would be able to do this, then agriculture and people wouldn't have to compete for clean water no more, so this would give a boost to agriculture, wich would lead to food prices dropping and so on.
It would be so exciting!
 
Agreed! The difference between the amount of money the USA spends on their military, versus the amount on renewables, would be laughable if it wasn't so scary. And maybe something to do with the petrochemical industry practically owning the administration (and Saudi Arabia practically owning America) (Michael Moore 9/11).

Saying that, photovoltaic panels were actually developed by the American military (not for the same reasons, but still).

Even without fusion, we could already power the world with the technology available to us now if people would invest. If making your own power is too much, get your energy from a windfarm builder (like Ecotricity). For making it yourself, wind is best if you have it, PVs if not. By far the best strategy is just to have an environmentally responsive house- superinsulated 'mass and tight' for cool climates, for hot passive solar design for cooling and a white painted roof to reflect heat.

Haha I bet there are enough brilliant minds on this forum to build a nuclear fusion reactor (if it would get them high!) ;)
 
And the strange thing about this overspending on defence is, that the influence of lobbyists from lockheed and so on is greater then the actual analyses made by defence-specialists. The USA is putting all it's cards on stealth-thechnology while ten years ago the russians and the chinese allready had the technology to make stealth planes visible. If Putin want's to do a little teasing, he would sell this technology to syria and iran.
The U.S.A, under the influence of lobbyists, consider stealth technology so valuable, that they are sacrificing manouvrabillity, speed ,flying range and amount of weapons, carried by these stealth planes to it's stealth feature.
If it becomes outdated by a minimum amount of chinese and russian investments, then the USA will have lost it's military dominance immediately, with all the amounts of money spent.
The stupidity of these people never ceases to amaze me.
 
ohayoco said:
Haha I bet there are enough brilliant minds on this forum to build a nuclear fusion reactor (if it would get them high!) ;)
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You bet there is, only problem is that on the small, home-build, scale you have to put more energy into the machine then you can get out.

Look at the web for "Fusor" or simply go to www.fusor.net ;)
 
Not so different from regular nuclear power then, which still uses up more energy than it produces (whole life cycle, i.e. when you include constructing and then decommissioning and decontamination). The whole industry is now just an thinly veiled excuse to have nuclear bombs.

The fusioneers inspire me and make me a little bit scared at the same time! Good on them, I just hope my neighbour's reactor doesn't go wrong.
 
I though carbon dioxide wasnt the proble, but carbon minoxide. We breath in oxygen and out carbon dioxide, so how could carbon dioxide matter?
 
^^Hahah that's what is so funny about when people call carbon dioxide a pollutant.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It is also a byproduct of aerobic respiration (what we do when we breathe and respire). Without carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases the earth would very cold. This is because greenhouse gases help retain heat we get from the sun. But whats even funnier is that water vapor is a stronger and more important greenhouse gas then CO2 (so you can throw all this hydrogen generator stuff out the window if you want to stop global warming hahahahaha!)! Methane and a number of other gases also act as greenhouse gases.

The idea behind global warming is that the more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the more the earth will on average warm up. This will supposedely cause a shift in climate patterns.

I have serious issues with global warming idea as it is currently being portrayed in the media. In essense the idea makes sense and is logical more greenhouse gases = more greenhouse effect = warmer overall climate. But to attribute the current warming we are experiencing purely to human action I think is well not proven. All the studies you see out there are mostly computer based models. Yes we can measure the amount of CO2 in atmosphere and try and correlate that with temperature average (like that famous Hockey stick model). But the models I don't always agree with. We can't even predict the weather tomorrow so how can they claim to predict how warm the earth is going to be in ten years based on only CO2 levels!? In truth they cannot and the evidence really at its heart is scant. People can make model after model after model but it doesn't always prove anything.

What about the sun? The sun cycles have been shown to be even more tightly correlated with global climate then greenhouse gases. But will Al gore tell you that? No. You know why? Because him and all his scum bag politician and big business friends are going to get rich taxing Carbon dioxide while at the same time not really doing anything to help the environment.
 
I thought the main concern wasn't the green house effect, but the pollutants that are destoying the o-zone layer allowing bad sun rays to pass threw. Do all green house gasses destroy the o-zone, or only some of them...and which ones? Carbon Dioxide or Carbon Minoxide?
 
Thereis no o-zone LAYER. That is a myth. It is dispersed through out our entire atmoshpre. There is not a protective shell around the earth. Also, sun cycle affect the earth more than anything we could hope to do, short of nuclear holocaust. Core samples have shown that typically the earth is warmer than it is now. But no, people think this is how the earth's climate is supposed to be because this is how it has pretty much been for recorded history. If the earth were as warm as core sampling has shown it to typically be, there would be no glaciers and most of the polar caps would be gone.
 
Without greenhouse gases we would all die.

The greenhouse effect is essential for most current forms of life to live on earth.

The greenhouse effect is related to the idea behind global warming.

The ozone layer was damaged by CFC's (chloro floro carbons) which can destroy ozone. They also rise in the atmosphere so can reach the ozone and when they do they destroy it. CFC's have been banned in most countries although they are sometimes sold and traded illegally. They are also probably still used in certain countries but I don't know which.
 
Wow, there is no o-zone layer? Why do they teach in school that there is one, and how did they determine it had a hole in it, as well as locating its position and predicted path? And i thought the ice melting was a problem, expecting the oceans to rise greatly.
 
"The ozone layer is a layer in Earth's atmosphere which contains relatively high concentrations of ozone (O3). This layer absorbs 93-99% of the sun's high frequency ultraviolet light, which is potentially damaging to life on earth.[1] Over 91% of the ozone in Earth's atmosphere is present here.[1] It is mainly located in the lower portion of the stratosphere from approximately 10 km to 50 km above Earth's surface, though the thickness varies seasonally and geographically.[2] The ozone layer was discovered in 1913 by the French physicists Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson. Its properties were explored in detail by the British meteorologist G. M. B. Dobson, who developed a simple spectrophotometer (the Dobsonmeter) that could be used to measure stratospheric ozone from the ground. Between 1928 and 1958 Dobson established a worldwide network of ozone monitoring stations which continues to operate today. The "Dobson unit", a convenient measure of the total amount of ozone in a column overhead, is named in his honor."- "Ozone Layer" at wiki.

It claims that the ozone layer is real, it dosen't say anything about it being myth or theory, but yet a scientific explanatation of what it is.
 
Wow, there is no o-zone layer? Why do they teach in school that there is one, and how did they determine it had a hole in it, as well as locating its position and predicted path? And i thought the ice melting was a problem, expecting the oceans to rise greatly.
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Its not like a literal layer like a cake layer. Its in the upper atmosphere as far as I know. The hole thing just means theres less ozone in certain areas. Usually around the poles because the CFC's damage somehow accumulated or the circulation of ozone somehow led it to be worse at the poles.

Ice melting could theoretically be a problem (also this depends on how fast the ice builds back up from precipitation etc). Its highly unlikely that the sea level will rise so fast as to create 20 feet rise or something like that.


welcome | Sea Level Research Group

sealevel.colorado.edu sealevel.colorado.edu

 
VisualDistortion said:
Thereis no o-zone LAYER. That is a myth. It is dispersed through out our entire atmoshpre. There is not a protective shell around the earth. Also, sun cycle affect the earth more than anything we could hope to do, short of nuclear holocaust. Core samples have shown that typically the earth is warmer than it is now. But no, people think this is how the earth's climate is supposed to be because this is how it has pretty much been for recorded history. If the earth were as warm as core sampling has shown it to typically be, there would be no glaciers and most of the polar caps would be gone.
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im sorry but you are wrong all the way

Of course there is an ozone layer. Not one, but two! One layer is in the troposphere (ground level) and is a pollutant in fact. The other is the one on the stratosphere between 15 and 50km of altitude.

ozone = 3 molecules of oxygen bonded together, btw. This is very important to understand why it protects us and also why the CFC break the ozone. 75% of all the ozone reduction is related to human activities. The rest is vulcanic eruptions and a few other natural processes.

when the ultraviolet light hits the ozone layer, it divides to an oxygen molecule and a free oxygen. So when two free oxygen molecules meet they can get together again and become O2.

The CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are light, so they rise to the stratosphere. There, when hit by UV radiation, the chlorine atom breaks away. It then hits the ozone, which turns it into two products, chlorine monoxide, and 02. When a free oxygen hits the chlorine monoxide atom, it becomes 02 and the chlorine gets free again, and this reaction can repeat many many time. You can see the chemistry behind it is no bullshit, its a fact.

So no, you are also wrong that samples have shown earth was warmer than now, and the same goes for CO2 level. All of these have been examined with very deep ice blocks from arctic permafrost and have shown that the levels of today are FAR from anything that ever happened in all of the possible chemically-examined history. There are graphs that show this very obviously.

It is a fact that the world has variations in different atmospheric levels, temperature and so on, but it is also an unquestionable fact that we humans are exerting a significant pressure on earth, fucking up the chances of several species, including our own chance on the future. Maybe we cant kill all life (you know this story/myth that the cockroaches would survive), but we can certainly be selfish enough to waste our potentials, fuck up the possibilities of survival and well-being of our grandchildren, and make a lot of unnecessary suffering for other lifeforms on the way
 
The actual concentration of ozone in the ozone layer is very very slight. but anyways, it's amazing how polarized the global warming theory is. You think people would be able to come to a concensus. I have a quote from an article by Noel Sheppard

"Now, there are scientists speaking out. There are hundreds of them speaking out. There are thousands who signed a petition, 19,000 on a petition against global warming. There are many scientists speaking out."

19,000 scientist saying gobal warming is a myth. wow. But no one talks about this. They talk about that jack ass Al Gore. The guy with all that stock in "green" companies. They guy who stands to make millions if the whole "green" movement really take.
 
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