Carbon Footprint

[BaalChatzaf]

I am sick and tired of the phrase "carbon footprint". Whenever any one says it I have an urge to reach for my semi-automatic fire extinguisher and let go a major blow of CO2. Hiss. Take that, you eco-phreak!

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

I'm sitting at home on May 3rd wondering when global warming is going to start. Your last post was right on target.

[BaalChatzaf]

I'm sitting at home on May 3rd wondering when global warming is going to start. Your last post was right on target.

The Earth has warmed and cooled many times through the ages. And without any help from the humans. The Little Ice Age ended in the 18-th century and it has been warming since. At some time in the future the world will cool down again. There are natural cycles at work.

Eventually (in a billion and a half years or so) the hydrogen in the Sun will be exhausted and it will begin to fuse helium into carbon. Then things with -really- heat up. The oceans will evaporate and the place will begin to look like Venus.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited May 3, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I'm sitting at home on May 3rd wondering when global warming is going to start. Your last post was right on target.

The Earth has warmed and cooled many times through the ages. And without any help from the humans. The Little Ice Age ended in the 18-th century and it has been warming since. At some time in the future the world will cool down again. There are natural cycles at work.

Eventually (in a billion and a half years or so) the hydrogen in the Sun will be exhausted and it will begin to fuse helium into carbon. Then things with -really- heat up. The oceans will evaporate and the place will begin to look like Venus.

Ba'al Chatzaf

I thought the sun had several billion years to go--that it was only half way through its life. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to buy some property on one of Jupiter's moons.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

There is a phrase that is really vulgar, but I can't get it out of my head: carbon pecker tracks.

I even start reeling from the metaphysical implications...

Dayaamm!

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I thought the sun had several billion years to go--that it was only half way through its life. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to buy some property on one of Jupiter's moons.

--Brant

The Sun is halfway to its ultimate burnout (it is too small to become a nova or supernova). However it will burn very hot when the hydrogen is used up and the oceans will evaporate. This will occur much sooner than the Sun's final death as a white dwarf then a cooled down cinder.

Life on this planet will have a very hard time a billion years up the road. Human life will probably cease on this planet. That means we will be extinct by that time or we will have moved to a more hospitable place. I rather suspect the former than the latter.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I thought the sun had several billion years to go--that it was only half way through its life. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to buy some property on one of Jupiter's moons.

--Brant

The Sun is halfway to its ultimate burnout (it is too small to become a nova or supernova). However it will burn very hot when the hydrogen is used up and the oceans will evaporate. This will occur much sooner than the Sun's final death as a white dwarf then a cooled down cinder.

Life on this planet will have a very hard time a billion years up the road. Human life will probably cease on this planet. That means we will be extinct by that time or we will have moved to a more hospitable place. I rather suspect the former than the latter.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Oh, we're going to evolve into something else. Mybe self-evolve. I've already done some of that myself. I was once pretty low on the pole, now I'm on OL.

--Brant

[mweiss]

Frankly, this "global warming" is great. The warmer it is in winter, the less I depend on oil, which is rapidly becoming out of financial reach. So bring on the global warming. I want 70 degrees F in January. And February. And March...

[Danneskjold]

Your car will start using more gas to run the AC though.

[Brant Gaede]

I thought the sun had several billion years to go--that it was only half way through its life. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to buy some property on one of Jupiter's moons.

--Brant

The Sun is halfway to its ultimate burnout (it is too small to become a nova or supernova). However it will burn very hot when the hydrogen is used up and the oceans will evaporate. This will occur much sooner than the Sun's final death as a white dwarf then a cooled down cinder.

Life on this planet will have a very hard time a billion years up the road. Human life will probably cease on this planet. That means we will be extinct by that time or we will have moved to a more hospitable place. I rather suspect the former than the latter.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Why not put up a sunscreen?

--Brant

[Danneskjold]

I think you guys will REALLY like this.

http://www.carbondeductions.com/default.asp

It's a site devoted to selling "carbon debits". Basically their goal is to offset all the "carbon credits" saved up by all the far lefty big shots and email those people telling them basically, "We did this because you're a wacko". The trees would have been destroyed anyway, and you get a video and a t-shirt out of it.

[Dodger]

I thought the sun had several billion years to go--that it was only half way through its life. Oh, well, I guess I'll have to buy some property on one of Jupiter's moons.

--Brant

The Sun is halfway to its ultimate burnout (it is too small to become a nova or supernova). However it will burn very hot when the hydrogen is used up and the oceans will evaporate. This will occur much sooner than the Sun's final death as a white dwarf then a cooled down cinder.

Life on this planet will have a very hard time a billion years up the road. Human life will probably cease on this planet. That means we will be extinct by that time or we will have moved to a more hospitable place. I rather suspect the former than the latter.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Maybe it's because I'm a follower of theoretical physics, or maybe it's because I'm a Star Trek fan, but I suspect it will be the latter.

:thumbsup:

Edited May 17, 2007 by Mitchell Hill

[BaalChatzaf]

Maybe it's because I'm a follower of theoretical physics, or maybe it's because I'm a Star Trek fan, but I suspect it will be the latter.

:thumbsup:

Unless we can increase our life span by two orders of magnitude we are not going to another star system to live. There simply is not an energy source that will accelerate mass to even half the speed of light (at which speed the time dilation effect is negligible). That means we either have to achieve suspended animation or learn to live a long time. The Bussard hydrogen ram scoop is simply not feasible. We would have to go too fast to get usable amounts of hydrogen to fuse. And we are still a Lawson Factor of ten away from getting sustained energy output from a controlled fusion reaction. Fifty-five years ago we were told controlled hydrogen fusion is thirty years down the road. It still is. A hundred years from now it will still be thirty years down the road.

Conceivably we could buy a few hundred thousand years by constructing habitats around Jupiter or Saturn when the Sun becomes really hot. I understand one of Jupiter's moons Europa may be a water world. So we could go there to live in very limited numbers. In general, out future in the solar system is quite limited. Also, no mammalian species has ever survived on Earth more than a few tens of millions of years. We are very dependent on the ambient environment. We are a clever bunch but not clever enough to live outside the Goldilocks Zone.

Ba'al Chatzaf