Spring starter, no electric problems

[Nickodell]

Bill: A smart man once said "You own your opinion. You do not own the facts." You want science? Here's science:

a) First and foremost: WHAT GLOBAL WARMING? According to NASA, the actual mean global temperature since 1880, when records were first kept, has been .... wait for it: one third of one degree Celsius. Wow. We're all gonna die! (Or maybe not). And the warmest year was 1934.

2) You mentioned the danger posed by melting of the Greenland ice sheet. Fact: Greenland (and Iceland) were cooler in the second half of the 20th Century than the first. Iceland lost glacier mass after 1930 because the climate warmed by 0.6 deg. C, but since then the climate has cooled and since 1970 the glaciers have been steadily advancing. 11 of them are advancing so fast that they are threatening habitation. Climatic Change: 63, 201-221. 2004.Algore's bogus film doesn't show this, of course.

You make continual references to CO2, and its effect of global temperatures. If warming followed increased CO2, that would be significant. It doesn't:

 

[Bill Blue]

So by your response, I take it your contention is that CO2 has have no impact on the climate. I suppose that means the whole concept of greenhouse gases is wrong. So what caused the early earth to loose it greenhouse climate? Or do you contend it never had a greenhouse climate and was created in its present form and temperature?

As to Al Gore, please try to leave him out of this conversation. I know it goes against every pore of your being, but try. What anyone uses, what anyone conserves, has no meaning in this concept. In fact, I don't give a rats ass about Al's movie. Have never seen it and have no plans to do so.

Bill

 

[Nickodell]

As with so much concerning the atmosphere, global warming/cooling, and paleontology, scientific opinion varies. Some maintain that early earth's atmosphere was CO2-rich, and causing CO2 levels to rise today would take us back to those temperatures (despite the contrary evidence shown in the graph, above).

Others say that hydrogen was the major constituent, and once this, and other light gases like helium, were lost to space, cooling occurred. For example:


Boulder CO (SPX) Apr 08, 2005
A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began on the planet.

Published in the April 7 issue of Science Express, the online edition of Science Magazine, the study concludes traditional models estimating hydrogen escape from Earth's atmosphere several billions of years ago are flawed.

The new study indicates up to 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favorable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life.

The paper was authored by doctoral student Feng Tian, Professor Owen Toon and Research Associate Alexander Pavlov of CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics with Hans De Sterk of the University of Waterloo.

The study was supported by the NASA Institute of Astrobiology and NASA's Exobiology Program.

"I didn't expect this result when we began the study," said Tian, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder's Astrobiology Center at LASP and chief author of the paper. "If Earth's atmosphere was hydrogen-rich as we have shown, organic compounds could easily have been produced."

Scientists believe Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and geologic evidence indicates life may have begun on Earth roughly a billion years later.

"This study indicates that the carbon dioxide-rich, hydrogen-poor Mars and Venus-like model of Earth's early atmosphere that scientists have been working with for the last 25 years is incorrect," said Toon.

In such atmospheres, organic molecules are not produced by photochemical reactions or electrical discharges.

Toon said the premise that early Earth had a CO2-dominated atmosphere long after its formation has caused many scientists to look for clues to the origin of life in hydrothermal vents in the sea, fresh-water hot springs or those delivered to Earth from space via meteorites or dust.

The team concluded that even if the atmospheric CO2 concentrations were large, the hydrogen concentrations would have been larger.

My concluding comments on this interesting exchange:

1) Keep science out of politics.
2) Examine the facts for both arguments, then draw your conclusion.

 

[Bill Blue]

So your willing to extrapolate a 30 year graph billions of years back to earth's early life? That's either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish. Maybe incredibly stupid. By the way, the data for the next 30 years is of much superior quality than the 1940-1970 stuff. Why do you not include it?

As to exhibit a), you say it shows actual mean global temperature. The graph you posted is clearly marked "US Temperature". But how does it relate to CO2 and temperature through the eons?

Have I ever maintained that we are experiencing global warming? It is my contention we need to take steps to stop doing what we have damn good reason to believe will happen. I'm pretty sure I've never stated when it will happen, or that it has happened. If global warming has not yet occurred,
fine. Lets take steps to insure it will never happen. Pretty simple, eh?

The piece you have duplicated relates to the conditions leading to the creation of the progenitors of life. We are talking of the lush years that lead to the creation of the petroleum and coal we love to burn. This arrived millions of years after the era this research deals with.

When you examine your facts for both arguments, be sure they are pertinent facts. So far, they have not been. You also maintain we should keep science out of politics, but continually link the two.

Why??

 

[skywords]

Listen to good program today on NPR about this subject and they said the largest contributor of CO2 was the animal and plant life on our planet termites contribute an astonishing amount of CO2. They were leaning toward the opposite of Gloom and Doom. I was not able to hear the whole program but I drew the conclusions 1.)That not all the data is correct. 2.) NPR is as I have always known tells both sides to every story. Oh and the program was a BBC production. I am a big fan of the BBC news.

 

[Bill Blue]

Rick, I'm surprised that NPR presented the termite piece as part of global warming, because they shouldn't have.

Termites, as well as all other animals, as one half of oxygen-carbon cycle. Plants are the other half. Plants take in CO2, strip off the O2 and use the carbon to build tissue. We then breath in O2, exhale CO2. That part I'm sure your aware of. But there is another part, in which the plant tissue is broken down, mostly by bacteria, either directly as part of the decaying process or in the gut of a termite, cow, horse, human, etc. Termites are just completing the long term (measured in hundreds of years) aspect of the cycle.

Burning coal or petroleum introduces a new source (nor really new, its just been tied up for maybe a billion years) of carbon. Burning fossil fuel is sort of like a spaceship landing everyday and unloading a few million pounds of CO2 everyday. Wouldn't that piss off everyone.

Bill

 

[Nickodell]

So your willing to extrapolate a 30 year graph billions of years back to earth's early life? That's either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish. Maybe incredibly stupid. By the way, the data for the next 30 years is of much superior quality than the 1940-1970 stuff. Why do you not include it?

Bill, Bill. In your haste to reply, as usual you miss the point and create the typical straw man. Nobody said anything about extrapolating anything. The point, which I have clearly stated several times, is that the entire premise that - 1) the world is rapidly warming, 2) because of an increase in CO2; 3) which is followed by a temperature increase; 4) caused largely by man; 5) especially those bad, bad Americans - is totally false because much of the scientific evidence refutes it. The exquisite comparison on the graph helps to show what baloney 2), 3) 4) and 5) are.

As to exhibit a), you say it shows actual mean global temperature. The graph you posted is clearly marked "US Temperature".

Got me. That was a quite innocent and inadvertent error. The reason for choosing that one is that it is probably the most accurate record of temperatures worldwide. Where would you like the measurements to have been made, Outer Mongolia?

The other reason is that the US experienced the greatest proliferation of heavy industries the world has ever seen in the period cited; we have all seen the pictures of the smokestacks belching out smoke. If any country was likely to see a significant CO2-induced temperature increase it would be the USA during this period. One third of a degree? Get real. The source is also reliable - NASA (that is, when they are not led astray by political pressures).

If global warming has not yet occurred, fine. Lets take steps to insure it will never happen. Pretty simple, eh?

. Er ... no. How are we to take steps to insure that it never happens? There is no dispute that the earth has gone throught freeze/thaw cycles every one and a half millennia (the last "mini-ice age" only ending some 200 years ago), quite irrespective of man's activities (and before he even appeared); we have as much chance of influencing this as controlling tomorrow's weather.

Speaking of which, what happend to the dire warnings of the multitudes of destructive hurricanes that were supposed to occur this year, lots of Katrinas and floods, due to the warming of the sea? It has, in fact, been one of the quietest years on record in that respect.

One last word on the subject. Some nutritionists and social scientists maintain that global warming, if it ever occurs, may be a beneficial thing for several reasons. Firstly, vast areas - millions of square miles - of now frozen lands, such as the steppes of Central Asia, currently too cold for cereal crops (and in many areas any crops at all) would be turned into arable land able to feed in turn hundreds of millions of the world's starving people, or provide renewable fuels like ethanol without impinging on current food sources. And in answer to "what about the Dustbowl of the 1930s?" this was caused by drought and irresponsible agriculture (constantly planting the same crop until the land was exhausted), not by heat.

Secondly, and something again that you will never read or hear from the Sky is Falling crowd, far more people today die from extreme cold than heat. Sure, there was a fluke in parts of Europe a couple of years ago, with people dying in a rare heat wave in France and Germany, but this was an anomaly. Worldwide, tens - possibly hundreds - of thousands who now die from cold could survive, and their numbers far outstrip the additional ones who might die from a temperature increase.

This is absolutely, positively my final word on the matter.

 

[jumpinjan]

I would give you both an A+ on that debate.

 

[tfctpa]

This seems like a great idea to me, with one modification. I have a swamp buggy, powered by a '43 Willys four banger. It is a 3 hour ride through the Everglades to get to my property and with out a buggy, it would be impossible to stay there for any extended time (You can only backpack a few 1.75 liters of Jim Beam at a time). Although the buggy has dual electrical systems, it has only one starter. I do carry spare brushes and a bendex, still I have been stuck with starter issues.
If they made this pull starter that bolted to the back of the electrical starter, that would be the cats meow!
I can envision the label "In case of Emergency, PULL!"

A couple of pulls of the cord and the spring starter will have enough energy to get your engine started
http://www.springstarter.com/pdf/Pentham.pdf

 

[Bill Blue]

Bill, Bill. In your haste to reply, as usual you miss the point and create the typical straw man. Nobody said anything about extrapolating anything. The point, which I have clearly stated several times, is that the entire premise that - 1) the world is rapidly warming, 2) because of an increase in CO2; 3) which is followed by a temperature increase; 4) caused largely by man; 5) especially those bad, bad Americans - is totally false because much of the scientific evidence refutes it. The exquisite comparison on the graph helps to show what baloney 2), 3) 4) and 5) are.

Got me. That was a quite innocent and inadvertent error. The reason for choosing that one is that it is probably the most accurate record of temperatures worldwide. Where would you like the measurements to have been made, Outer Mongolia?

The other reason is that the US experienced the greatest proliferation of heavy industries the world has ever seen in the period cited; we have all seen the pictures of the smokestacks belching out smoke. If any country was likely to see a significant CO2-induced temperature increase it would be the USA during this period. One third of a degree? Get real. The source is also reliable - NASA (that is, when they are not led astray by political pressures).

. Er ... no. How are we to take steps to insure that it never happens? There is no dispute that the earth has gone throught freeze/thaw cycles every one and a half millennia (the last "mini-ice age" only ending some 200 years ago), quite irrespective of man's activities (and before he even appeared); we have as much chance of influencing this as controlling tomorrow's weather.

Speaking of which, what happend to the dire warnings of the multitudes of destructive hurricanes that were supposed to occur this year, lots of Katrinas and floods, due to the warming of the sea? It has, in fact, been one of the quietest years on record in that respect.

One last word on the subject. Some nutritionists and social scientists maintain that global warming, if it ever occurs, may be a beneficial thing for several reasons. Firstly, vast areas - millions of square miles - of now frozen lands, such as the steppes of Central Asia, currently too cold for cereal crops (and in many areas any crops at all) would be turned into arable land able to feed in turn hundreds of millions of the world's starving people, or provide renewable fuels like ethanol without impinging on current food sources. And in answer to "what about the Dustbowl of the 1930s?" this was caused by drought and irresponsible agriculture (constantly planting the same crop until the land was exhausted), not by heat.

Secondly, and something again that you will never read or hear from the Sky is Falling crowd, far more people today die from extreme cold than heat. Sure, there was a fluke in parts of Europe a couple of years ago, with people dying in a rare heat wave in France and Germany, but this was an anomaly. Worldwide, tens - possibly hundreds - of thousands who now die from cold could survive, and their numbers far outstrip the additional ones who might die from a temperature increase.

This is absolutely, positively my final word on the matter.

Well, I must say I am disappointed. I was hoping to learn why you, a man of science and recognizing what we learn in Biology 100, reject the theory of global warming. Maybe someone can explain what I seem to be missing. We seem to have plenty of non-believers.

Bill
Oh yes, I'm not interested in the "We're not there yet" stuff.

 

[Bill Blue]

This seems like a great idea to me, with one modification. I have a swamp buggy, powered by a '43 Willys four banger. It is a 3 hour ride through the Everglades to get to my property and with out a buggy, it would be impossible to stay there for any extended time (You can only backpack a few 1.75 liters of Jim Beam at a time). Although the buggy has dual electrical systems, it has only one starter. I do carry spare brushes and a bendex, still I have been stuck with starter issues.
If they made this pull starter that bolted to the back of the electrical starter, that would be the cats meow!
I can envision the label "In case of Emergency, PULL!"

Come on Tom, just get out and give that thang a big push! Or maybe a big swim.

Bill