More noise about climate

Thanks...glad to help

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Fair enough. If this is a problem of /any/ magnitude, and if we have no "magic bullet" solution at hand - then it would seem wise to consider partial solutions that, in aggregate, might produce an acceptable outcome at an acceptable cost.

I would also seem wise to continue the search for "magic bullets" _and_ to find /more/ partial solutions to increase the probability of a favorable outcome.

At present, it appears to me that the magic bullets all require some kind of breakthrough development, and the drawback to breakthroughs is that they don't seem to happen on any kind of predictable schedule - then next could come later today, or it could come five hundred years from now...

The partial solutions appear to be incremental in nature. The first CFL bulbs to hit the market weren't all that reliable, the current crop seem to be better, and over the next (small number of) years we can expect them to improve significantly. I'm seeing the same kind of progression for LED lighting, with luminosity/watt being the improvement factor.

One of the molecular biologists over at Pioneer Hi-Bred told me that they (biologists) know how to do the gene splicing to produce bio-luminescence. Goof ball that I am, I envision street lighting with glowing trees - and can't help wondering just how much light might be coaxed out of a plant. (Might I light my living room with a few well-placed ficus plants? If we produced bio-luminescent grass for safer parks might kids come home with glow-in-the-dark knees and elbows?) :)

I think you're right about driving a Prius and using CFL bulbs. They're /not/ enough - one of the interesting challenges of the 21st century will be finding a whole spectrum of improved technologies so that whether the IPCC is /generally/ right or /generally/ wrong, the people of the 22nd century find more right in their time than we do in ours.

At the very least, point to a model that can predict YESTERDAY.

J. Clarke wrote: ...

Caesar didn't have quite the same labor contract w/ the unions... :)

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Who said anything about "absolute certainty"? You're evading.

That would, indeed, be the ideal...

...but I think the reality might be that politics (the acts of politicians and governments) has been a tool used to control economics.

Hmm. Have you closely examined the /effects/ of debate? Have they resulted in real/meaningful/positive changes?

To _whose_ economic interests do you refer?

When you run the numbers vs the IPCC demands, you will find that no combination of "partial solutions" will do the job even if the Third World freezes all increases in CO2 emission. The change they want is not small, it is radical. It means taking per capita CO2 production back to the level in the mid 1800s. This means pretty much replacing all fossil fuel use with something else--that means no gas or oil home heating, no gas stoves, cars and ships and airplanes and other means of transportation run on something other than fossil fuels, base load plants run on something other than fossil fuels and that maybe leaves enough room for leakage from industrial processes.

And when the Third World wants to grow, if the CO2 emission rollback is to be sustained, then they can't be allowed to build _any_ fossil-fueled power plants--they _have_ to build non-carbon-emitting plants or the efforts of the US and the EU and Japan and the rest become pointless. And restricting the Third World to non-carbon-emitting technologies is its own huge can of worms both in what technologies are viable (remember, in the long run they want their MTV) and in how such a restriction would be enforced.

Remember, China is the largest single emitter of CO2 and if they continue growing their emissions at the rate they did in the previous decade, will be out-emitting the entire rest of the world by the end of this decade. Compared to that, choosing to drive an econobox and turn off a few lights is a fart in a windstorm. In fact it's counterproductive--when people delude themselves that economizing in their personal lives is having a meaningful effect on CO2 emissions then they don't lobby for the huge changes that actually have to take place in order for the emissions to be reduced to the IPCC-specified levels.

Morris Dovey wrote in news:hk4ktm$fo6$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

Yes, that is relatively simple. However, this luciferase is the protein that catalyzes conversion of ATP to AMP with the production of light (i.e. the glass of the lightbulb plus the socket). You also need a source of ATP (like the electricity for the lightbulb) and the luciferin that does the actual luminescing (the glowing filament in a bulb).

And then you get the kind of light of a firefly - weak and greenish. The gene/protein geeks have made variants of different wavelengths, but it is still not much lighting bang for the buck.

The major advantage is that you can hook this relatively small protein to other proteins by gene splicing, and express the combined protein in cells or animals. Then you can follow the fate of the protein by microscope, and see how and under which conditions it moves between (subcellular) compartments. This is exceedingly useful for research to figure out if, how and why things happen. The movies are fantastic (for a biologist). I don't think this is going to be the savior for generalized lighting.

Morris Dovey wrote in news:hk4mn1$id2$1 @speranza.aioe.org:

I used the comma and the "and" above to indiccate independent things. Apart from the debates (like we are having here), the coal industry, the oil cartels, the "greenies", and the innocent consumer all are economc interests that want to achieve goals that may somewhere along the line conflict. Let's assume that your solar water pumps become reality on a huge scale. Then the oil cartels might see them (you) as a threat to their sale of their commodity. (I am exagerating of course - I do hope that your pumps become a very useful alternative pronto!!!).

Concrete would be extremely expensive in the north. It would have to be extensively repaired, if not replaced, each spring.

-------- Looks just like the one along side the I-405 here in L/A.

Lew

We were through Winnipeg MB last summer and drove through the neighbourhood I lived in in the mid 1970s.

The concrete roads poured more than 30 years ago were in very good condition.

Psst! Concrete is seldom recycled.

You would if the federal government is to pay to replace all the asphalt roads with concrete. Some of the dump trucks used to haul sand and cement would have to be diverted to haul money from your state to mine.

So what! It's for the children.

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in news:000e17fe$0$2271 $ snipped-for-privacy@news.astraweb.com:

And like the (in)famous Elmhurst gastanks next to the LIE in Queens.

"HeyBub" wrote in news:SuidnYHn3K2vcvjWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

That's new to me. Shouldn't it be the aggregate in new concrete?

Highway funds should go to railroads in the Northeast .

I walk/bike a few minutes to the NJTransit railroad station ("Radburn"), then ride the trains at half fare (over 62) to either Hoboken or Manhattan. I like railroads ...

"CW" wrote in news:08qdnZV- iJbqdvjWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

Not if it were poured by competent people, I think.

Put in a different way -- CO2 only absorbs energy in specific wavelengths of light (think of it as a filter the CO2 absorbs light in certain wavelengths and does not affect other wavelengths, letting that energy pass through with no impact). At some point, the maximum absorption in those wavelengths is reached and all of the energy in those narrow bands is being absorbed. Thereafter, it doesn't matter how much additional CO2 you pump into the system, no additional energy in those wavebands can be absorbed and CO2 has zero impact in other wavelengths of light.

BULL S*IT.

If your eyes were not brown before, they are now.

Lew