lborne
It all started with a rabbit
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2006
- Messages
- 1,387
I've seen lots of posts on both sides of the Global Warming issue. I'm an engineer and have been focusing on alternative energies the past several years. A co-worker of mine has been studying sea level rise for about 40 years.
First, global warming will happen no matter what. It is a cycle of the earth that has happened before humans were here.
Second, humans ARE just making it happen faster than normal - maybe much faster. Coal, Oil and Natural Gas are all fossil fuels that were formed eons ago and are highly concentrated solar energy. Remember Ellen's energy encounter? - all the plants in the past absorbed the suns energy and are now fossil fuels. We are reaching deep into the earth, extracting this consentrated energy, and releasing it into the atmosphere. No matter how you look at it, converting from one form of energy to another has negative side effects.
More bad news - even alternative energies have negative impacts. We could power a significant part of the US east coast with the energy in the Atlantic Gulfstream (my area of research), but we'd slow the flow down such that it would change the weather patterns in Europe. Plus, all alternatives are fueled by the sun which is low density, thus the need for vast amounts of real estate (windfarms, fields of corn for ethanol, etc.)
Nuclear is going to be the only answer, and even that releases large amounts of heat into the world, not to mention the waste products.
First, global warming will happen no matter what. It is a cycle of the earth that has happened before humans were here.
Second, humans ARE just making it happen faster than normal - maybe much faster. Coal, Oil and Natural Gas are all fossil fuels that were formed eons ago and are highly concentrated solar energy. Remember Ellen's energy encounter? - all the plants in the past absorbed the suns energy and are now fossil fuels. We are reaching deep into the earth, extracting this consentrated energy, and releasing it into the atmosphere. No matter how you look at it, converting from one form of energy to another has negative side effects.
More bad news - even alternative energies have negative impacts. We could power a significant part of the US east coast with the energy in the Atlantic Gulfstream (my area of research), but we'd slow the flow down such that it would change the weather patterns in Europe. Plus, all alternatives are fueled by the sun which is low density, thus the need for vast amounts of real estate (windfarms, fields of corn for ethanol, etc.)
Nuclear is going to be the only answer, and even that releases large amounts of heat into the world, not to mention the waste products.
