Friday Hack Chat: Climate Change

This Friday, we’re talking climate change. Is it possible to remove carbon from the atmosphere before most cities are underwater? What role can hackers play in alleviating climate change? It’s all going down this Friday on the Hack Chat on Hackaday.io

We’ve invited [Tito Jankowski] and [Matthew Eshed] to talk about climate change this Friday over on hackaday.io. [Tito] and [Matthew] are the founders of Impossible Labs, and they’re looking for ways to find, test, and build technology that will remove carbon from Earth’s atmosphere. Their goal is to return the earth’s atmosphere to 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide by 2050. Will they succeed? If someone doesn’t, you can kiss every coastal city goodbye.

Their first job is getting everyone to care. [Jankowski] thinks it can be done through better access to information and snazzy graphics — if people knew what was going on, maybe they’d give a darn. So whether you’d like to talk graphics and data or the engineering of carbon sequestration devices, this is a Hack Chat of global importance. Join us!

Here’s How To Take Part:

join-hack-chatOur Hack Chats are live community events on the Hackaday.io Hack Chat group messaging. This Hack Chat will take place at noon Pacific time on Friday, June 30th. Confused about where and when ‘noon’ is? Here’s a time and date converter!

Log into Hackaday.io, visit that page, and look for the ‘Join this Project’ Button. Once you’re part of the project, the button will change to ‘Team Messaging’, which takes you directly to the Hack Chat.

You don’t have to wait until Friday; join whenever you want and you can see what the community is talking about.

156 thoughts on “Friday Hack Chat: Climate Change

  1. Oh, noes! The ocean is rising, the ocean is rising! WHO WILL SAVE US?!?! That’s right, big government by loads of new regulations! Yes me must regulate gas-powered automobiles, those nasty power plants(coal, natural gas, and nuclear), and much much more out of existence. Also we must ban air conditioning, that’s super evil! Ah heck, we should just force everybody to abandon our high standard living and live in mud tents!

    1. Seriously, it is not so hard. Seeding the oceans with essential minerals, like iron, produces tremendous plankton production and everything else). It pulls loads of CO2 out, and the high carbon skeletons settle on the ocean floor to someday become limestone. The research has been done and tested – despite objections. It is cheap and efficient and will save salmon runs and all that good stuff.

        1. They simply establish the biome the way it was 100 years ago when the waters of the North Pacific were blue-green. But if you think it is a bad idea, lets not do it. In fact, lets not do any of them. Someone will think every idea is bad. Why not cancel the Hack Chat and save everyone’s time?

          1. Quote:
            “Why not cancel the Hack Chat and save everyone’s time?”

            That’s also a bad idea…. Everything is a bad idea, breathing is a bad idea, not breathing is a bad idea…

    1. If you look at a graph of temperatures over the last century, although there was a general rise between 1900 and 1940, it kind of levelled out around the peak period of tube-based guitar amplification in the 50s and 60s. Things only really started to get out of hand around the introduction of transistor amplification. Sure, you can call it ‘coincidence’, but the numbers don’t lie.

    1. Yeah no. The hype naturally produces skeptics. For example, sea levels have risen about 140mm in the last 100 years. HaD asks “Is it possible to remove carbon from the atmosphere before most cities are underwater?” Facepalm.

      1. People always worry about the rising ocean level. They talk about it as if it is a bad thing, completely ignoring the good that could come from it, such as increased ocean life habitat for the already dying coral reefs, or removing California from the union so we don’t have to put up with them anymore. As a side effect a 13m rise in sea level would flood a significant portion of DC, so we could get rid of that mess as well.

        1. Rising oceans is part of what’s killing corals. Ocean acidification is bigger, but if the oceans rise faster than reefs can grow, they die. Which destroys the fisheries that so many people depend on.
          Also decreased coastal real estate will simply push the people you wish to avoid inland & cause mass migration due to failing fisheries, flooded coastlines & increased storm severity / impact since all the mitigating sand bars, reefs, and swamps have been destroyed..

          1. “Also decreased coastal real estate will simply push the people you wish to avoid inland & cause mass migration due to failing fisheries, flooded coastlines & increased storm severity / impact since all the mitigating sand bars, reefs, and swamps have been destroyed.”

            But then, Siberia would be a more hospitable place to live, opening up millions of hectares for the migrants.

          2. This begs the question: How come there are ANY coral reefs? Where did coral come from? How did it survive past changes? How did it survive the last glaciation period where sea levels were 130 meters lower than today? Were there corals in prehistoric times when CO2 was much higher and ocean acidity must have been very high compared to today? BTW, you know the Mississippi changed course within recent history and new sand bars and deltas formed pretty quickly.

          3. >>This begs the question: How come there are ANY coral reefs? Where did coral come from? How did it survive past changes? How did it survive the last glaciation period where sea levels were 130 meters lower than today?

            They all didn’t. There are extinct species of coral. As with most of the concerns of global warming the rates are the biggest threat to ecologic diversity. What previously took thousands of years is happening on century and decade scales.

            >>Were there corals in prehistoric times when CO2 was much higher and ocean acidity must have been very high compared to today?

            Yes. In the past the ocean chemistry was different. Shells were made of carbonates, but the exact polymorph of carbonates (ie calcite (present day) vs aragonite (historic)) makes a difference in how shells hold up.

            >>BTW, you know the Mississippi changed course within recent history and new sand bars and deltas formed pretty quickly.

            And they also change quickly when we dam up the Mississippi decreasing sedimentation. Rising sea level also changes the coastline and it will take a while for a new equilibrium to develop.

        2. > They talk about it as if it is a bad thing, completely ignoring the good that could come from it, such as increased ocean life habitat for the already dying coral reefs, or removing California from the union so we don’t have to put up with them anymore.

          I’m sure you weren’t expecting us to just sit there in the rising water and die. So, when the oceans rise, we’re moving next door to you. But you’ll probably be too busy dying of starvation after losing half the country’s agriculture production to care anymore.

          1. 1. Given the stereotypical Californian, actually just waiting in the rising water wouldn’t be that surprising…
            2. It appears you forgot that most of the agriculture in the US is in the heartland.
            3. California has conveniently disarmed its self rendering invasion of heartland states laughably futile.

        1. There are not any convincing arguments – unless you are a true believer. There are no experiments that can be performed. It is only speculate, model, wait, and repeat. Arguing that the predictions are based on settled science is to go down the rabbit hole. Akin to trying to disprove UFO’s, ghosts, and God. Or saying that when we cut the hearts out of captives in the spring, the crops always ripen in the fall.

          1. agreed. the mathematics are horrendously complicated to model, too many factors to be totally certain. I think that, by forcing people to accept their argument as 100% proven, climate change activists actually make people more skeptical about it.

          2. n, you can verify and quantify and predict gravity with a great number of experiments. Maybe the key to people misunderstanding the relationship between the climate debate and nice Newtonian science is that heat flow is NOT deterministic. You can not run a heat problem backwards to see where it came from. I have studied physics all my life and it just occurred to me now that many people do not understand this, and that it is clouding their intuition about what must be right and wrong about climate claims.

          1. do you have any sources to back up your claim that it was false and a bad model?

            the only data i can find on that was a rather large discrepancy in the predicted depletion in 1994-97, where depletion was indeed overestimated.

        1. “Behold! The instrument of your doom! I call it: The Annihilatrix! And when it is completed, a million gigatons of thrust will propel the Earth, directly, into the Sun. So look upon my works ye mighty, and despair…..”

  2. >>Their goal is to remove 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide by 2050……..Project 2050: Removing atmospheric CO2 to return Earth to a pre-industrial atmosphere

    Uuuuuuhhh. What? They need to get their numbers straight.
    Pre-industrial levels are not 110ppm, they’re around 270ppm. Thus making the problem some what easier only needing to remove 140ppm.
    Sequestering 7 E12 kg of CO2 in 30 years (200 E9 kg/yr) is gonna take a lot of energy. It takes roughly 10% of coal power plant output to capture/compress 50% of CO2 emissions (eg; 1000MW needs 120MW for compressors).
    Energy will always be the limiting factor whether we compress, liquefy, or chemically alter the CO2.
    If we don’t have carbon neutral or zero-carbon energy sources we’re going to release more CO2 than we sequester (thermodynamics is a bitch).

    1. The problem is the same people that scream from the rooftops about CO2 levels are the same people who try to shut down “zero carbon” energy sources due to the environmental impact of creating them. “You can’t build a dam, that’s bad for the fish; You can’t build a nuclear power plant, the waste is too dangerous; you can’t build solar panels, the chemicals used are too toxic!”

      1. To add to the list: “You can’t build wind power plants, they’re bad for the birds…and ugly…it’s mostly the ugly part that’s bothering me, but think of the BIRDS!”

      1. Because they value human life more.
        “CO2 is just fertilizer” is about as asinine as “arsenic is just a metal”. If that’s actually convincing to you, you fundamentally don’t understand what being discussed.
        We all need water to live but if you hold your head underwater too long, you’re going to have problems.

        Pollution is just energy in the wrong place.

  3. Since co2 lags temperature rises by approx 800 years its plain to see that co2 isnt warming anything, the Sun is the cause of all the heat input into the climate system, but dont let that get in the way of a good story on “saving” the planet from evil carbon dioxide.

  4. Approximately how much carbon dioxide would be prevented from intermingling with the atmosphere if we banned artificially carbonated drinks? (Beer and Champagne would still be allowed in this hypothetical.)

    1. Using some statistics that I found online [Read: May be inaccurate, but should give a rough order of magnitude], in the US alone it would save 309 Million kg of CO2 a year. (Average CO2 in 12 oz soda ~2.2g. Average consumption of soda per person 650 8oz servings a year. Population of US in 2016 324 Million.)

      This sounds like a lot, and it is, but not in comparison to the 1.148×10^18 kg of CO2 that is in the atmosphere.

      1. Add in the energy savings from people not driving to the store for just a soda, and also the reduction in the production of plastic bottles…
        It would be a good start, and fewer rotted teeth as well.

    2. BTW, another thing “discovered” to blame by militant vegans: The large-scale livestock farming. The large amount of cows is just farting too much.

      Which is technically correct, cows do fart all kinds of funny gasses that mess with the atmosphere…but i don’t think they contribute as much to global warming as some claim they do.

        1. Some people see the whole cow-farting thing as THE cause of climate change.

          While i do not deny that cows do contribute to global warming, it isn’t the thing i’d put all of my effort and time into. But some people do.

          It’s basically the same issue as with fine-dust emissions by cars over here. All you hear by the greenies is “Cars cause death because of the fine-dust particles.” especially in regards of the diesel scandal. And then someone took the time and gathered some data. The result was that cars are only responsible for less than 10% of the crap we have in our air over here. It’s all very populistic.

  5. HaD you disappoint me. Why do you have to go political? If you truly want hard science, read Freeman Dyson’s easy “heretical thoughts on climate change.” He rightly asserts that we know practically nothing about our planet and saying that changing climate is caused by human produced co2 is a theory taken to be fact to the extent of becoming dogma. Anyone who questions it is shunned, like in any religion. I’m not saying climate change couldn’t be real, I’m saying we don’t KNOW it’s real.

    Climate change is to science as Satan is to Christianity, it’s a convenient thing to make rules about whose existence can’t be proven right now, but that everyone believes exists.

    Can we please get back to hacking? I’d rather argue over 555 vs arduino, not Al Gore vs the scientific method.

    1. I’m not sure I’d call an essay by a successful scientist that somehow still fundamentally misrepresents the philosophical underpinnings of science as ‘hard science’. He bemoans the usefulness of predictions, conflating science-fiction with scientific hypothesis, but then a sentence later celebrates the life of a scientist who made many predictions that turned out correct. Complaining that modelers never leave their comfy offices, completely ignoring the polar, and mountain expeditions made to study and collect ice core samples.

      Much of the essay is an exercise in ignorance bordering on Clarke’s first law. We have enough money to solve multiple problems at the same time. Katrina was not made worse by funding of NOAA or climate change modelers. Fossil fuels are not significantly composed of mantle emissions. I get that this wasn’t meant to be a wholesale dismantling of climate science by Dyson, but he could stand to read a few more papers on the subjects he brings up.

      1. Dyson may be a much deeper thinker than ye. Prediction by people who do not know that ALL first order differential equations have exponential solutions should be ignored, as they will always find a catastrophe in the near future, be it starvation, peak oil, or warming. Those who are surprised that second order has oscillating solutions should also be ignored, and there are a lot of “researchers” in this area who slept through calculus. The modelers also like to fiddle and adjust older measurements on the ridiculous belief that they can do it without bias.

        There are others who can make reasonable predictions because they understand how to do simple boundary condition calculations that show something is impossible, or inevitable. Making a distinction between the types of predictions good form. The climate enthusiasts can handle critical scrutiny if they are any good.

        1. @TheRegnirps
          Thanks for your comments. I have to agree that both sides of the discussion must be open to hearing the other side and then, provide reasonable, respectful responses to support their conclusions. What really irks me is that both sides seem to think that the discussion is closed and the conclusions are correct. Those who behave this way have completely removed themselves from civil discussion and ignore the scientific method. Well documented facts, supported with the method of collection, etc. should always be up for discussion. There may be many ways to improve the process, but not if one or both sides are closed to any new information.

          1. I find the believers will shut off discussion or ban people who disagree as stupid and inbred. I find the skeptics are mostly people who are skeptical about the efficacy of various countermeasures. Then there are all the spectators who feel the need to join and make it black or white, yes or no, in typical Internet fashion.

        2. He very well may be, and i don’t doubt his intelligence or contribution to science but on this matter he is ignorant. He has access to all the data and paywall journals, but it’s clear he hasn’t read them, if for no other reason than to rebut them.

          Both peak oil and feeding the planet are real concerns, but their solutions are more tangible.

      2. The point he makes that everyone, you included, intentionally ignore is that this is THEORY, supported only by horribly incomplete computer models and politicians that pay for them. How can we expect to be able to model geological time periods with the same data that fails to accurately project the precipitation only days in the future? There are too many variables at play and we only measure, let alone know about, just a few of them. Our effect on the climate is dwarfed by human hubris and self importance. We don’t know what we don’t know and no one will admit it for fear of loss of funding or getting kicked out of the club. This is politics, not science. And Hackaday has once again stooped down to clickbait to get a flame war going.

        1. >>The point he makes that everyone, you included, intentionally ignore is that this is THEORY supported only by horribly incomplete computer models and politicians that pay for them

          You misunderstand the word theory in a scientific context as what climate science is based on.

          >>How can we expect to be able to model geological time periods with the same data that fails to accurately project the precipitation only days in the future?

          100 years is not geologic time and any graph you look at reflects the gigantic uncertainty of climate change predictions for 2100. As for the observations from ice cores and isotope analysis, They fit those lines using tested and proven statistical regression algorithms.
          The Farmers Almanac and Poor Richards Almanack [sic] have a great history of predicting weather trends. Climate forecasting is not weather prediction. They’re talking about regional and global trends, not exact rain numbers that is going to fall on the plains in Spain. Yes the Degree predictions are precise, but that’s a global number, not the daily highs for Helsinki.

          >>>This is politics, not science.

          Only because you won’t read the science but still want to have a say in the laws.

          1. Once again, I do not profess to know one way or the other, but I am highly suspicious of anyone that claims certainty and authority on the matter, especially when they ridicule those who dare question or seek additional information.

          2. The information is literally at your fingertips. There are numerous sources for actual hard numbers, free to access, that can show you the data and methods used.

            If telling you you fundamentally misunderstand what’s being said is ridicule i don’t know how to correct your confusion.

    2. Just because there’s an opposing conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it’s “political”. That’s like saying that a post about Eratosthenes’ estimation of the Earth’s circumference is political just because there are some people who think the Earth is flat.

    1. Methane is a much greater threat to the climate. Thankfully, recovery and burning of gas from bovine waste and decomposition of food waste has become a viable alternative energy source.
      I hope more companies step up to the plate.

    1. And we also ran around in loin clothes spending most of our time hunting to support a population of a couple million people.
      We don’t hunt buffalo and mammoths anymore, we depend on ecosystems that will not fare well with rapid sea level and/or temperature rise.

      1. Highs and lows are common during inter-glacial periods. Even if humans are speeding up the process, it would happen anyway, and it is foolish to think humans can stop or reverse a natural process.

  6. I don’t know why so many of you got offended by the very premise, but I find it inspirational to think about how something could be done.

    It is very simple situation, and none can say the following isn’t true: we have been releasing enormous amounts of long-dormant carbon deposits back into quick-turnaround carbon cycle for quite a long time now, what can we do now if we chose to quench it down or reverse the trend?

    Perhaps we don’t need to, as many of you strongly profess. Suppose we want to, for whichever reason we might have.

    1. By irrigating deserts more food could be produced thereby removing carbon from the atmosphere.
      This though could encourage population growth so it would probably be for the best to bury the food to sequester the carbon.

  7. It’s I think telling that there are few, if any, geologists who think that climate change is caused by humans. FWIW I know of *none*.

    But then we spend 6+ years learning about the earth, its history and composition. So the mud volcanoes belching methane in the Arctic and many other places is not news unless you skipped all your classes.

    Funny how 5th graders have been taught that glaciers covered much of the northern hemisphere until it got warmer and most of the ice melted. Yet a few years later that information is completely lost. Replaced by angst over natural processes and the delusion that mankind is omnipotent and can reverse planetary scale changes at will.

    Yes, the earth is getting warmer. But we’re just along for the ride. Humans are not threatened by global. warming. We don’t live that long. 15,000 years ago, Galveston was a hill over 100 miles from the ocean. When it gets warm enough, the gulf stream will quit carrying heat to northern Europe and it will start getting cold again. Then everyone will start worrying about staying warm.

    BTW this is so far off topic for HaD as to be recognizable as a Brain Offbench article without even reading the byline.

    1. Then you must not spend much time around geologists. Never mind that most climate science is grouped under the geology department at nearly every University in North America. Even major oil corporations, who employ a great many geologists, have pages on their company web sites proclaiming the looming threat of man-made climate change. As do the Geological Society of America and American Geophysical Union, two of the largest geology professional societies in North America.

    2. I know plenty of geologists, atmospheric scientists, physicists, and those with both or all three PhDs. I don’t know a single one who thinks that the various government employed enthusiasts, Bill Nye’s, Al Gores, etc. have a clue. And their attempts to make it a science suck. You have to know what you know in order to recognize what you don’t know.

    3. Studies have shown that 98 percent of scientists believe climate change is caused by human actions. I really doubt your story of meeting these geologists.

  8. I’m a senior research geoscientist. My MS was igneous petrology, but I moved into reflection seismology. Much of my work involved computer simulations of wave propagation by various means on many flavors of computer. This taught me a great deal about numerical modeling on the computer. And having to fix bugs in over 2 million lines of other people’s scientific codes has left me unwilling to put much faith in the correctness of programs even when the science is well developed. In the case of the earth at planetary scale, the science is so thinly done that no model has valid predictive properties.

    From time to time the earth spews forth large volumes of rock, methane, sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide and numerous other gases in smaller volumes. Yellowstone is an active volcano which is estimated to have last erupted over 600,000 years ago. One day it will erupt again and wipe out most of life in North America. The earth’s climate will suddenly get drastically colder as the dust thrown into the atmosphere reflects away solar energy.

    These things are called “caldera collapses”. They are the death throes of an old volcano. Most of the magma is gone. What is left has been enriched in silica by crystal fractionation which makes the molten rock thicker and less fluid. That in turn requires a lot of pressure to develop before it finally breaks through.
    The result makes a large nuclear explosion seem small.

    There are at least 4 active in North America: Yellowstone, Yosemite, Crater Lake and Jimez near Los Alamos. There are many similar volcanoes scattered around the world.

    The result of a typical large scale caldera collapse is best described as Pompeii at continental scale. When Mount Mazama (Crater Lake) went off, it deposited several inches of ash in Kansas, The ash killed the plants, so the herbivores and then the carnivores all starved. This class of eruption is over 100,000 times larger than Mt St Helens. The ash close to the caldera comes down as a 300 ft thick blanket of white hot rock. The weight of the ash squashes round balls of pumice flat.

    This is but one of many such things that happen on earth. The mud volcanoes belching methane in the Arctic are perfectly normal. It happens all around the world and presumably has done so from the beginning of life. Organic matter deposited on the sea floor accumulates and buries older sediments. The decaying matter produces methane. Some of the methane finds its way to the surface fairly quickly. Quite a lot gets trapped as methane ice at a shallow depth below the sea floor. Estimates of the volume of methane trapped in hydrates are staggering. Methane hydrate is only stable in a very narrow range of temperatures and pressures. So whether sea level rises or falls, when it changes, some of the deposits become unstable and erupt. If you are so unlucky as to be there in a boat, it will drop like a rock to the bottom.

    There is a lot more neat stuff like this to learn about. Take some intro geology classes.

    1. The various methane ice scenarios have kept me up more than once. There is something extra scary about the silent and deadly extinction of nearly everything living in huge areas. The chain reaction CO2 eruptions from lakes in the Rift Valley are a tiny example.

      1. I can send you a diploma addendum that will upgrade you based on when and where you got a degree or graduated high school – for a small fee. The older your degree, the greater the upgrade. Based on Grade Inflation in the US, a Pre-1960 BS is now a post doc researcher. Pre-1980 is a PhD and pre-2000 is a masters degree. (Depending on the institution you attended.) Beautifully printed diplomas from the Institute for Advanced Springalian Studies – the institute where the Springalian of the Third Kind was developed for space-time navigation in nonlinear regions.

    2. One thing [Reg],
      Yellowstone is caused by a hot spot in the Earth’s mantle, different than “typical” volcanoes.
      Hawaii is the result of another such hot spot.
      These spots remain “stationary” beneath the movement of the crustal plates, so they appear to move.

  9. It’s incredible what an emotive word change is.

    There is the camp that looks forward to change if almost any kind and those that resist change at any level.

    Just imagine today when you roll in to the office and the boss announces that today we are going change the colour of the carpet from blue to green.

    Nobody would do anything as half the staff would be complaining that it should stay the same and the other half would would be saying it’s about time.

  10. Does anyone remember when the Deserts were Oceans or when they were lush rain forests? MUST HAVE BEEN PRE GLOBAL WARMING WARMING, Or maybe we’re on a bubble that is continually eating it self and this rise is actually a sinking and the weather shift is more than some carbon elements in the sky gods eyes.

      1. All of which are factored into models. You’re not the first person to think of that.
        Like I also pointed out above the idea that solar output is responsible has been thoroughly disproven. All you need to do is use a search engine.

          1. Pick a search engine, any search engine. You will find that they do. Again, you’re not the first person to have this concern.
            Go read the papers and the reports. Your concern has been addressed in every way imaginable. If you imagine a new one, there’s probably a degree and publication in it for you.

  11. YAWN, typical Brian content. FFS you guys are dreaming if you think you will ever be able to do anything on a scale that is relevant. Just sit back and let the big boys sort it out (they already have and are just waiting for the fusion energy input to the process, then petrochemical plants will become atmochemical plants) and if you really care you should in the meantime minimise your carbon footprint, no more flying for you Brian.

    Problem (mostly) solved, so move on climate cult dreamers.

    Oh and yeah I can vigorously defend the above claims if anyone is silly enough to challenge them without doing a bit of research first.

  12. The biggest SCAM of all time next to Catholicism,Socialism and Islamism combined.
    Anthropogenic climate change idea only has ONE purpose and one purpose alone and that is to MILK the unsuspecting taxpayers untill the cows come home and for all eternity. Period

  13. Someone should port the “climate change” models, that have been unable to accurately predict anything so far, to the Raspberry Pi. They’ve been running those models on the wrong platform.all along…which is why they get such inaccurate results.

  14. It sucks when people try to make you defend facts as if they were opinons, and try to prove their opinions as if they were facts.

    None of you know more than the climate scientists who have been working hard on this for life. None of you can seriously expect that every single scientist would agree to some massive conspiracy to put forward an idea that accomplishes no personal enrichment beyond just cleaner water and air.

    Are you going to trust the opinion of some accountant who wandered in and said you’re designing your circuit wrong, or not declaring your function properly, or aren’t using the right spindle speed for proper chip loading when milling aluminum? THAT’S YOU, climate change deniers. You’re wandering into someone else’s area of expertise and pretending to know their work better than they do.

    1. I bet the trolls have google alerts set up. I’ve never seen so many comments on HaD before. Now it’s flooded with people who are absolutely 100% certain that climate change is some kind of liberal/government/big business conspiracy. Interesting times.

    2. But that’s just it. The scientists don’t agree. Of the ones listed on the panels, only a few percent have commented publicly yes or no. If the data on how many scientists agree sucks so badly, yet gets written up as 97%, how can you take the rest of the conclusions seriously? Don’t get suckered by people on a gravy train.

      “With this new $10 billion budget we will have controlled fusion in 10 years.” has been the going on since the 1960’s. The leadership who make the claim retire before the promise comes due. It is like fixing the roads. All about the money.

    1. Exactly. I’ll start taking the fear mongering seriously when:
      A) Al Gore sells his beachfront mansion.
      B) They do a climate conference using the interenet rather than flying to one place, one by one, in private jets.

      1. Internet idea is a great one:

        Think about it, not using or browsing the internet is a waste of energy.

        .

        How many peta-watts-per-day of servers are sat there dormant, waiting for visitors to read their contents?
        If the servers are sitting there using power when no-one or nothing uses them, then they use power for nothing.
        Therefore they simply sit there and use power, they waste power.

        Lets all has the internetz!!!

    2. Boogeyman! Boogeyman! Soros! KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

      Who cares what some individual’s carbon footprint is? Do facts change depending on who once repeated them?

    1. Pfft, Hidden in plain sight.

      No amount of tin foil hat is gonna stop someone (en mass) being convinced that jumping off a cliff is a fun activity.

      Or is it not gonna stop someone being convinced that it is a good idea to go to the local race-specific war-time salvation camps, because the barbed wire is to keep potential enemies out and there are on-site cafes and everyone gets a good clean shower.

      The problem is, nobody needs to mess with the various parts of the nerve cortex through mystical means when there are more sensitive input devices like ears and eyes.
      It takes one or more malicious psychopaths to deceive people into their bidding, be-it the death of their victim at their victims’ own hands or have their victims make more victims.
      There are plenty more things that can be done. P.S. the concentration camp part is a reminder of how evil convincing people can be.

  15. Global warming was a stupid way to explain why summers in midland England now require a jumper and sometimes a coat during a grey/raining week.

    Climate change is the phrase that explains it best…

    Summers:
    Today I had to go to work in a moderately heavy jumper/hood as to keep the slight rain off and to block the cold north wind from tiring me out through cooling… Wishing it was still the 5-minute summer we had over last week!

    Winters however: I can get so cold even with multiple layers of clothing that I can go into a thermal shock and still try to stay upright on my bike. Then the winter dries out my hands as they’re exposed to the wind, even after using e45 and other remedies.

  16. The hoops one has to jump through to put a comment on here is nothing short of evil. It might be worth Hack-A-Day’s while in follow in Techdirt’s model. Enough said of that.

    The only comment I’ll make is that both Anshul Sanamvenkata and Leithoa are so far out in “blind man’s land” that anything they have said in their responses it sheer unadulterated rubbish. They have presented no evidence, just hearsay, and have presented no arguments to support their views. When they can provide their calculations (which even a fifth grader could do) to support their POV, then they may have a RAY of hope of convincing level-headed, critically thinking people to support their view of anthropogenic climate change. Until their models have been vetted and confirmed by independent teams, they have nothing to offer the debate.

    I have done the energy requirements calculations and every time I have presented them, the climate scientists have run away, shouting NaNaNa, I can’t hear you. On that basis, climate scientists, their models and their conclusion are not worth a brass razoo. As one gentleman above stated, we don’t know enough. Nothing is settled and won’t be as long as the climate science remains the bastion of political hacks instead of intelligent, clear thinking and critical thinking men and women. When that happens then we may find out what, if anything, we can or should do in relation to the obvious climate change effects that we see today.

    There are two groups of people who contribute nothing to the climate change investigations, those who argue there is no climate change and those who argue that there is only anthropogenic climate change. Both ends are political, both ends are ridiculous and both ends are causing good research to be covered and destroyed.

      1. When you start at Gravatar, then go to WordPress and then to gmail and have to reset passwords because they are not recognised (yet once were) and then rinse and cycle. It took 30 minutes going through that hell and I lost the original comment to be made.

        That is comment hell. I don’t care about holding for moderation, that’s fine. It just all the other stuff that was needed to be done.

  17. The climate change will make what are now barren dry areas lush with rain they say.
    So who gives us the right to control the atmosphere and ruin it for those countries who actually benefit?

    And an experimental ‘fix’ undoubtedly will end up causing disastrous side-effects, so who the fuck do you think you are that you can mess with the entire planet with experiments?

    Lay off with your experiments. Just pollute less.

    And even if the trumpettes and such and selfish self centered types here were right and there is no man-made climate change – it’s ALWAYS good to pollute less regardless of any climate change.

      1. What’s acceptable? 1000 ppm , 500 ppm, 1500 ppm, 200 ppm. Climate science give no indication, horticulture gives a higher figure than the current stated level.

        When you can give the energy calculations and state how the processes work and what are confirmed acceptable levels for atmospheric carbon and water then we can validly consider your statements.

  18. I am bummed that I missed this. I can’t believe that people are arguing over whether climate change exists or that it is man made. The pollution that man has created is definitely speeding up the process. I am glad to see that there is a transcript of the chat included in the comments.

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