Fossil Fuel Survialist Guide for the Sane

Funny how a debunking of the evils of fossil fuels has turned into a debate about asthma.

Interesting thread. BTW I headed the clinical team that developed many anti-asthma treatments so let me poke in a few thoughts. It is outside the scope of this thread to discuss the four types of asthma but you are right it can be one of a million things. However, just to add fuel to the flames (sorry about the pun), one the leading causes of bronchial irritation in the NE where we burn 80% of the nations heating oil is mercury and that my friends comes from heating oil not coal. So you went to CA and were fine --- duhhh ----- no HO.
**Broken Link(s) Removed**So these idiots know that you can't get the mercury out so they are going to burn biodiesel in the schools $uckin idiots - excuse my French.

OMG, that would mean premium anthracite coal was a fuel of choice. Another red herring is antimony in the ash. So how much ash was thrown on tomatoes in Pittston over the last century without problems? That my friends is how epidemiology is supposed to be done. Whoops a black car has just pulled up outside they traced my IP. Come visit me wherever they throw coal lovers.

PS and don't get me started about formaldehyde in the atmosphere from all that wood and pellets. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen

Thank you Belin and Richard for bringing common sense to this issue. If every non- leftist would spend 2 minutes a day educating the Sheep we could save our country.
Josh

Everyone should read the book, "The Deep Hot Biosphere" by Thomas Gold. It will give you a new prospective on so-called "fossil fuels". Fossil fuels are another government sham to rob the sheople.

traderfjp wrote:Should we all start burning bit?

Why not??? I am!

Some of the other things that the fascist liberals won't tell you is that CO2 has a global warming potential that is minuscule in comparison to methane. Every day, vast quantities of methane are released from swamps and other anaerobic digestion of plant matter occurring in nature - including billions of people and animals. As world population increases, so does methane output. I love beer, brats, and sauerkraut so I'm doing my part.

As for "acid rain" sulfur and other pollutants, Mother Nature takes care of that in greater proportions than we could ever generate through volcanic action. Volcanoes produce enormous quantities of sulfur compounds and other toxic gasses, along with ash (particulates) that circulate around the globe.

I certainly don't propose we go back to the days when Pittsburgh was obscured in a cloud of coal smoke and Gary, Indiana smelled worse than it does now. Nor do I propose we drive the equivalent of '65 Dodge Darts and put 2-stroke Detroits back in every Kenworth. Modern engines are far more powerful, efficient, long-lasting, and produce only a few percent of the emissions level of that '65 Dart. Modern coal power plants likewise produce only a fraction of the pollution that the old uncontrolled coal plants did.

We need to be responsible and utilize the best technology we can WITHIN REASON to use the energy sources we currently have. Illinois has huge coal reserves. Why would I send my money over to a bunch of Arabs who basically want me to die? Screw them. I'm going to send my money to a hard workin' Joe downstate who's trying to put food on his table. I drive a diesel VW. Sure, it pollutes a tiny bit more than a gas car, but at 50 mpg, my pollution PER MILE is a fraction of that 12 mpg crack smoke filled Escalade cruisin' da hood.

Richard isn't saying that we should all screw over the environment as egregiously as possible. I think we've already done that (Love Canal, etc). But right now, the political Left Wing wackos are running amok and sucking everyone else along with them in creating unreasonable, impractical, self-promoting and unsubstantiated laws and regulations. Ethanol? Most people have figured it out as a joke, yet the subsidies continue. Burn the corn for heat, feed it to cows and make me a steak, or turn it into BOURBON so I can drink it!

The incandescent lamp thread on here is just another wacko enviro-Nazi sham forced upon us by the pinko commie Liberals because they must save everyone from themselves - we are all just too stupid to make our own decisions.

I wish our government would worry more about the things that are REALLY going to wreck our society like the BANKRUPTCY OF AMERICA and the fact that you cannot have a Gross Domestic Product if you don't actually PRODUCE anything!! Sorry, service sector jobs aren't production jobs. They don't make anything. Neither does any of the "finance" sector. Low paying service jobs do not produce any tax revenue and likely COST money because that mother of 3 working at Wal-Mart is on food stamps, medicare, and whatever other government handouts are available so she can scrape by on $10/hr.

We only have one Earth, and we need to treat her responsibly since we can't go anywhere else if we screw it up. But it needs to be a balanced, shared effort that uses facts and realistic expectations as it's basis rather than sensationalized drama, junk science and self-serving political agendas.

well said europachris

I'm liberal on most issues (don't belong to a political party though), and believe in global warming. The fact remains however, that as a widowI living in an old 2800 sq. ft. house it costs me a fortune to heat it every season and my oil bills are killing me. The cost just keeps rising. My husband was renovating it when he died and selling it isn't yet an option since it still needs some work. I refuse to struggle to pay my bills because of it and I will no longer be kept over a barrel - I'm installing a coal burning stove. If the environmentalists don't like it, it's too bad! Show me a cheap, "non-polluting" way to heat my house!!

You could try just plain HOT-AIR the likes of which the tree huggers & Al Gore have been spewing for years--be at peace with your coal burning lucy. Sorry about your loss. Where are you from (roughly) ?

Amishlucy wrote:I'm liberal on most issues (don't belong to a political party though), and believe in global warming. The fact remains however, that as a widowI living in an old 2800 sq. ft. house it costs me a fortune to heat it every season and my oil bills are killing me. The cost just keeps rising. My husband was renovating it when he died and selling it isn't yet an option since it still needs some work. I refuse to struggle to pay my bills because of it and I will no longer be kept over a barrel - I'm installing a coal burning stove. If the environmentalists don't like it, it's too bad! Show me a cheap, "non-polluting" way to heat my house!!

I know I'm new here, so I hope you all don't immediately discredit my statements. If I continue to be active here, youll find that I couldnt give a rats a** about trying to blow sunshine and rainbows. Wiith that said...

I was an Earth Science major in college, with backgrounds in Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Meteorology and Biology. I have a master's degree in science as well, and while I don't have a collection of cherry picked images to share with you, I have studied every one of these topics and can apply the science to popular claims. Ultimately, I agree with much of what you have shared, but there are some things that are undeniable, except to those who choose to ignore the big picture, and ALL of the information. Instead of cherry picking graphs and figures, here is the long story short.

Global warming is a stupid name. Doesnt mean it isnt happening. We (the scientific community) are more sure that global warming is anthropogenic than we are the smoking causes cancer. Not the idea of climate change, but the rate at which it is changing. The oceans are rising, based on global averages. One location may certainly be changing differently to another. Thermal expansion, changes in wind/ocean currents, and salinity can all account for some rise or fall in the levels, but again, its not one or two locations that matter, but the global mean. The same concept is true with weather patterns, glacial melt, biological diversity, ocean acidification and about a dozen other forms of evidence.

Global warming should be called global weirding. Things get weirder (out of the normal) faster. Bottom line is that our actions affect our environment. I don't blame coal, oil or nat gas. I use all of them, or plan to in the near future. I understand the driving my truck, having electricity, and heating my home releases gasses to the environment that were once trapped underground. The technology and advancements to find replacements just doesnt exist yet. Its getting better, but the alternatives are not cost effective yet. Maybe someday in my lifetime they will be, but in the immediate future it just isnt happening.

If you want to make a pro/con argument towards any topic, not just fossil fuels, don't cherry pick.

Define "normal"

tsb wrote:Define "normal"

Normal depends on global trends, not specific location. Every piece of evidence shows the rates of change (global temp, CO2 concentrations, ocean acidification, ocean temp, etc) are increasing at rates faster than at any time during the documented time. Evidence that can be collected from ice and seafloor sediments that easily go back tens of thousands of years. There are some peaks and valleys, as there will be with any natural evidence for a complex systems, but there is no doubting of the rate of change. Do I personally expect worst case scenario? No, but it is still a possibility. Do I personally expect best case scenario? No, but it is still a possibility. Until we fully understand the odds of the outcomes, there is no doubt that some harm is being done. In reality, it is smart to keep the future in mind. What is the worst case scenario for the future if we take actions now? We leave the world a better place than what we found it/made it to be. The day the technology exists for me to affordably integrate alternative energy into my home, I will phase out of fossil fuels. In the mean time, I will continue to use fossil fuels because they work, and they work pretty dang well.

If you have an equation in which normal " depends" you have no equation.

dennis8483 wrote: What is the worst case scenario for the future if we take actions now?

The worst case scenario is that real people, especially the poor, are made far worse off by changes to the economy made in the name of a "better future", with scare tactics used in place of any type of credible cost-benefit analysis to guide public policy. Cheap power runs industry; high-priced electricity resulting from a predisposition to avoid coal (and other fossil fuels) hurts the economy and creates regressive price increases on things that rely on electricity which people use - or hope to use - virtually all of the time. You may be ok with harming the economy and the quality of life people can enjoy, but I'd like to see a little more tangible demonstration of why that's good policy.

Before you quote any of the alarmists on that, please take your own look at the data. The last regression analysis I saw showed a 0 trend line through the last 17 years worth of temperature data. And this was during a time of booming increases in CO2 concentrations. If you look at the original IPCC projections, actual temperatures are and for a while have been below the low end of the range they projected. Instead of acknowledging that other effects may be equal to or greater than CO2 (or other greenhouse gasses), and going back to improve the analysis, it seems like all we hear is fearmongering. Actually, it seems like we get the fearmongering precisely because the data don't support the draconian measures favored by the alarmists.

Before taking actions now, I'd like to hear more from the few rational people who are participating in climate science and warming issues. Real scientists have actually found that things like warmth and CO2 promote agricultural productivity and biodiversity. And you don't even need a scientist to figure out that the average rate of ocean level rise since the time of the last ice age has been higher - without the help of people - than what we are experiencing now. Even the proposition that you can discern a human impact by looking at changing trends is, to be charitable, ill-conceived. Feedback loops such as increasing solar gain as a result of receding ice cover, and increasing CO2 concentration as a result of warming oceans, operate without human involvement, and have to be properly accounted for to have any type of scientific basis for concluding there is a causal relationship - rather than a simple correlation - between global warming and human activity.

Until that happens, your concept of taking actions now to me looks like an unsound policy that produces known and immediate harms in pursuit of ill-defined, undefined or non-existent benefits.

Mike

tsb wrote:If you have an equation in which normal " depends" you have no equation.

How is this.... Normal is defined by global trends.