gas cars

Ahem. There is a certain storm water drainpipe where I grew up that will never rust from the inside out.

But again, why can't all of this be true? Was the gasoline engine instantly as efficient in the late 1800's as it is today? Was the infrastructure all in place for gas stations? So then why do we expect the EV ecosystem to be 100% from the very start? I'm certain that if it wasn't for Ford's Model T, there would have been way more EV development beyond the few initial electric and electric-hybrids that were invented/created.

I don't care what some politician or "industry expert" said on TV, it's all very complicated, but right now all things considered, I understand it to be more environmentally friendly/responsible to build and drive EVs. Of course, their are no free lunches - even hydro, solar, and wind have their manufacturing to consider.

Are they for everyone in every situation? No. Live in the Midwest with open expanses of ground to cover is very different than living and trying to commute on Long Island. One round trip to get groceries may be more miles than some put on in a week living in suburbia.

I don't like using a one-off example using myself, but I lived with plug-in hybrid for six months. When my office was four miles away, I could make it to work, appointments at lunch, and back home at night and the engine never ran. Plug it in at home at home, rinse, and repeat. I wouldn’t need to see a gas station unless I drove to my then girlfriend 180 miles away. When the office moved 32 miles to the other side of Atlanta, I would make it about 18 miles, at 75 mph, before the engine would start. Charge it at work if I could, and again, rinse and repeat.Either way, I had 380 hp on tap when I floored it.

Most of the answers are out there, but with so much disinformation, it makes it hard to find, and accept, the truth - even for those that have yet to take a position. But why would there be this much investment from automakers, utility companies, and charging station companies, etc if this was all a short-term game?

On the other hand, we are all a long-ways-away - if ever - from seeing viable electric airplanes, cargo ships, and probably even over-the-road tractor-trailers. Electric has, and will have its place, and no, no one is coming for the 250 million gasoline cars in the US, or almost 1.5 billion gasoline cars worldwide on the road now.

The government(s) can mandate what it wants, but especially in the US, the market will continue to determine what is on the road. The real game changer would be – in many unpleasant ways – if they tax the hell out of gasoline like they did in Europe pushing diesels all those years – and we all saw how well that worked out.

 

All this discussion about science being settled/not settled reminded me of one of our most basic scientific rules, at what temperature does water boil?

Ask the average person on the street this and the answer you're likely to get is 212°F or 100°C, if they in fact know.
Ask the same person what effect does altitude have on this. I bet maybe 25% would know the correct answer, leaving approximatley 75% being incorrect.

If they've heard 212°F or 100°C all their life, they'll probably accept it as fact, especially if government and media promote those numbers. Both those entities would be complicit in spreading this (dis)information.

Now let's return to altitude. Suppose you tell every person who emphatically claimed the only answer of 212° (or 100°) wasn't correct and altitude plays a major role in water's boiling temperature. I'll wager some of those people would now claim you're a science denier and refuse any further discussion with you. They'll tell everyone who'll listen about you and not to believe anything you say. Meanwhile, actual proven science has your back.

Water's boiling point DOES decrease with increased altitude. Here's a Pew Research Center report from 2015 which pointed out how few Americans knew the real truth.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...nt-change-with-altitude-americans-arent-sure/

The majority of participants DID NOT know the correct answer.


I strongly believe we'd see similar results for any scientific question. Government and media capitalize on this, why is why you must do some of your own research.

 

I would just add that for the vast majority of people the altitude question (or questions) on it's effect on things like water boiling, or engine horsepower, or even their own breathing isn't relevant, 'cause they live close enough to sea level.
That doesn't change any of the facts, of course, like whether the above is true or whether or not many people remember basic high-school (grade school?) topics. In other words, you lose it if you don't use it.
Unfortunately, those same people know ALL about the Kardashians and the latest tic-toc trends.

 

I keep hearing about how 'WE' have to stop doing what we do, what about the rest of the planet??

 

That's one thing I'm good at! I make a living boiling water under pressure!! LOL!

 

He's the fireman on a steam locomotive.....

 

Reminds me of this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9AqbDtSFNU

 

Could be, but my steam locomotive boilers are stationary!

 

Air conditioning was originally for printers to keep the paper stable ,we go from wavy to tight without heat and temp control.

 

Jim,

I did mention in my last reply that we can't say for sure that the events I mentioned are specifically caused by climate change. There is no absolute way to know, but we can reason that it's probable that they occurred due to an upwards trend in temperature. It sounds like we can both agree that temperatures are rising though. No offense taken either looking back on my schooling I feel there was a healthy amount of the curriculum dedicated to logical and critical thinking, and there's no harm in encouraging more of that. Towards the end of high school I remember taking a standardized test that had a section involving the oil industry in Alberta. After reading a source it asked questions about why the sector can be seen as beneficial and why it could be seen as harmful, all without taking a specific position. This kind of test is nothing out of the ordinary, but I brought up that section because after a change in governments, suddenly it was being used as an example of indoctrination against our most profitable economic sector, which was apparently a crime punishable by a hastily rewritten curriculum. Point being: I believe that a curriculum teaching critical thinking is typically not one that would also be used to indoctrinate kids. Unless we're reframing what is considered critical thinking, but I don't think that's productive. Anyways.

You raise a good point about cost of damage relating to hurricanes. My intent was to illustrate the economic damages caused by an increase in stronger storms in a hotter ocean as a reasoning to investigate and attempt to slow or stop the cause of a heating ocean. Now in regards to sun spot activity, from what I can tell there isn't a whole lot of evidence correlating solar minimums or maximums to a decrease or an increase in temperatures. The closest and most recent correlation we have is the Maunder minimum. It was a prolonged period of minimal sun spot activity from around 1645 to 1715, and has been theorized to have had an effect on the earth's climate since it was around the same time as the Little Ice Age. This however occurred over a longer time period than the Maunder minimum, and as such the primary cause of cooling is believed to be a higher than usual amount of volcanic activity and subsequent lowering of the amount of solar radiation able to reach the earth by volcanic ash (similar to what some other people in this thread have referenced, also known as albedo). Let's assume for the sake of discussion that the minimum was the main driver of the cooling. We have definitive evidence of a relatively extreme (in terms of pace) rise in temperature over the last two hundred or so years. The last eight years have been the hottest years on record. Solar cycles have an average span of about eleven years. Our last maximum was initially predicted to be in 2010 or 2011, and was also predicted to be the strongest in 60 years, but was instead observed to have occurred in 2014 and was then ranked among the weakest on record. The next solar cycle is estimated to have commenced in December of 2019, so it doesn't stand to reason that the sun could have been a main driver in the hottest years of the last decade, since most of them occurred at or around a solar minimum. Also in regards to a higher solar radiation output at maximums, it is estimated that solar irradiance increases by approximately 0.07%.

So what's causing the observable rapid increase in global temperatures? You are correct in saying that we can't say for sure because there are so many variables. I'm also on your side in regards to climate hypocrisy as I've heard it called, and I understand completely how this would make one much more skeptical of the cause. However, so far CO2 and other greenhouse gases are the strongest correlation we have. You've mentioned before how the earth emits much more CO2 than we possibly could year over year, and you mentioned again how most of it is absorbed back into the earth. This is correct, but not all of the CO2 does get reabsorbed since humans create an unnatural source. The earth absorbs what it can, and compensates for the rest. Most of the excess is absorbed by the ocean or the atmosphere, with plant life also contributing.

Given the time period over which global temperatures have sharply increased unlike anything seen in estimated historical trends, we can infer there is more than nature at work. Associating the trending rise in temperatures to the upwards trend of greenhouse gas emissions over the last century paints a fairly clear picture, and the clearest picture we have so far to explain the phenomenon.

I agree with you that science is never set in stone. I tend to avoid conversations with people who refuse to adapt their views in the face of new evidence. Nobody should be persecuted for their beliefs, and beliefs should not be used to persecute. Like I've said, I understand the skepticism especially with how our leaders act in regards to the subject. I think it's important to distinguish the science from the way it can be (and has been) used for political gain.

I once again appreciate your reply and your willingness to continue this conversation

 

Those glaciers used to be under 3 miles of ice, been melting long before we fired up our 455's...

 

Cuz it's cool!

 

NotRyan,

Points taken, and well argued.. but I fear your using single point data sources for your information. Interesting to hear about your education, it appears to be very different than what is going on down here. Especially in college, the last thing they want you to do is think for yourself.

Right now, I don't have the time to continue this discussion with the new research it will require, I recall reading something a few months back on this topic, but this time of year is crazy for me in the shop..

We will revisit this topic in the future, possibly in a new thread.

JW

 

NotRyan - I saw this on TV today from our local weatherman/high school science teacher.


The last time the atmospheric CO2 amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when temperature was 2°–3°C (3.6°–5.4°F) higher than during the pre-industrial era, and sea level was 15–25 meters (50–80 feet) higher than today.
It's similar to NASA/NOAA charts. Based in ice cores from Antarctica:
https://climate.nasa.gov/rails/active_storage/representations/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBK1ZrQWc9PSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--7f5d10cb1ae6164d8fb3690ee1552fedb2cfc67a/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdCam9MWm05eWJXRjBPZ2wzWldKdyIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--308d105b858fde2aa7c2bd953e87f719e2dd73bb/co2-graph-083122_scaled_scrunched.jpg?content_type=image/webp&disposition=inline

 

This ones shows the methane levels overlaid on the CO2 levels:


That's enough for me...