NASA and Global Warming junkscience

[Pancho]

How does NASA let itself get tied into the junk science aspect of anthropocentric global warming? Is the proposal to shield Earth at technicolour costs a fabulous example of a lunatic squeezing through the crack or is it simply an example of non-critical new age thinking at NASA?

The global warming and cyclicity through geological time is normal behavior in our solar system and our galaxy. It takes a lunatic to dream up a scheme whereby the human race could or should interfere with a cyclic billion year old evolved multiple input multi loop system and dream that his idea would result in a perturbation.

[Rivertree]

I thought I saw some other thread(s) on this. Granted, the one looked too big to approach.

I'll check out the Al Gore propaganda flick, Inconvenient Truth, at my earliest convenience. Seriously, I may see it even today.

To address the Q.
NASA is a political organization. I wrote a paper on it (no longer available for show) for one of my first business classes.

If the politicians give Global Warming attention, then so must NASA. It's not like NASA can just choose its own agenda. Otherwise, the Saturn V would still be launching space stations.

Peace out.

[neilzero]

Hi Pancho: The scientific community is evenly divided several ways on the subject of global warming. In my opinion, it is sensible to do low cost pilot programs which might help offset the effects of a warmer Earth, if Earth continues the 12,000 year warming trend. I agree, that further studies are of little value as few of the researchers, and their bosses have an open mind on these topics. Neil

[firstcontact]

Whether our ever increasing green house gas emissions are a factor of global warming or not the fact remains-pumping co2 every second into our atmosphere is not good.
using the agrument that global warming is just a natural trend in a cycle is your choice. But even if that were true hell, i think it's to hot in the summers right now and don't like the idea that it's just gonna get hotter and hotter whether we like it or not. i am all for reducing the tempurature of the planet.

Another thing. If we are heading for hotter times bigger deserts and higher oceansas a result of natural processes so be it..guess what again we can still move forward to stop that whether were causing it or not! people that like to take the stance that were not causing global warming almost always also take the stance that since were not causing it we should't take any action to prevent further warming. No matter what stance you take NO ONE really wants this place getting any hotter then it already is.

[aurora]

Pancho: Calling Global Warming junk science is incorrect, misleading and I assume intentionally provacative on your part.

I see this is your first post, so welcome to the Board. I would suggest you look around at the rules as well as previous discussions on this topic.

[Kaptain K]

So many, on both sides, treat global warming as an either or situation. It's not that simple! Yes, the Earth goes through cycles, but that is not a license to ignore the contribution that we are making.

[ToSeek]

Why is it impossible that humans can't affect "cyclicity through geologic time"? We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that humans are pouring more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We know that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing dramatically. Is it such a stretch to conclude that we're having an effect?

[Gillianren]

To address the Q.
NASA is a political organization. I wrote a paper on it (no longer available for show) for one of my first business classes.

If the politicians give Global Warming attention, then so must NASA. It's not like NASA can just choose its own agenda. Otherwise, the Saturn V would still be launching space stations.

This is incorrect, you know. Yes, NASA is funded by the US government, but I don't believe it is in itself political--and it is currently being funded by an administration that disputes anthropogenic global warming, so in fact it is indeed going against the government agenda.

[Kaptain K]

As an aside, I saw an interview with GWB (CNN I think) where he claimed that he is now "solving" the global warming debate! (????)

[TomT]

Resume our nuclear power program to produce electricity. Don't store the spent fuel rods, reuse them by existing re-enrichment methods. Over time, phase out of generation of electricity by coal & natural gas, and start running automobiles, etc on electric batteries. Recharge batteries using nuclear generated electric power.
Results:
1. Most important - end dependency on foreign oil.
2. Side benefit - significant reduction (eventually to near zero) in carbon dioxide emissions. Then over time we will see if warming was caused by man.
TomT

[DOOMMaster]

Resume our nuclear power program to produce electricity. Don't store the spent fuel rods, reuse them by existing re-enrichment methods. Over time, phase out of generation of electricity by coal & natural gas, and start running automobiles, etc on electric batteries. Recharge batteries using nuclear generated electric power.
Results:
1. Most important - end dependency on foreign oil.
2. Side benefit - significant reduction (eventually to near zero) in carbon dioxide emissions. Then over time we will see if warming was caused by man.
TomT

I like the nuclear idea part, but your second idea is totally unfeasable. Battery powered vehicles will never replace gas and diesel powered vehicles, not unless we manage to make a huge jump in battery technology that allows a vehicle to go 300-500 miles before a recharge. Current battery technology only allows maybe 80-100 miles before requiring a recharge time of 5-10 hours.

Fuel cell technology may solve this problem, but it's so inefficient at this point that we'd need so many nuclear plants it's just not feasible yet either. I agree that we need to reduce foreign oil use, but alternative fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel are our best bets for the forseable future.

[MG1962A]

Personally I am not comvinced golabal warming is a product of mans intervention. However any attempt to stop crap being pumped into the air has to be seen as positive.

Regardless of climate, the health issues of rebreathing some of this rubbish is indisputable. That alone is good enough reason to attack the question of air pollution.

[neilzero]

Inserting the spent fuel rods (and other nuclear waste) into the enrichment assembly line (or uranium ore processing) seems reasonable. What are the disadvantages other than some costly redesign of the enrichment assembly line?
I reccomend doing about 100 different alternative energy pilot programs. If several of them prove feasable for 1% of Earth's energy needs we have put a small dent in the foreign oil problem. Neil

[TomT]

I like the nuclear idea part, but your second idea is totally unfeasable. Battery powered vehicles will never replace gas and diesel powered vehicles, not unless we manage to make a huge jump in battery technology that allows a vehicle to go 300-500 miles before a recharge. Current battery technology only allows maybe 80-100 miles before requiring a recharge time of 5-10 hours.

Fuel cell technology may solve this problem, but it's so inefficient at this point that we'd need so many nuclear plants it's just not feasible yet either. I agree that we need to reduce foreign oil use, but alternative fuels such as ethanol and bio-diesel are our best bets for the forseable future.

Just get the ball rolling and start replacing coal/gas fired electric power plants with nuclear. Don't you think our state of the art in battery powered vehicles will improve in the next generation? At least an 80 to 100 mile range will take care of most commuters today. They can recharge overnight when electric power demand is a minimum. This also will make nuclear power more affordable, by filling the valley in demand at night, when usage for other reasons is at a minimum. More usage makes unit cost go down. Someone has to get this thing off dead center. All we do is talk, and do nothing.
By the way, ethanol is great, but pretty soon you are going to start hearing about the fact that it takes 4 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. Then when aquifers start drying up, we will have another nightmare to address. When will reason finally get us to do something instead of just talk and wring our hands?
TomT

[TomT]

Inserting the spent fuel rods (and other nuclear waste) into the enrichment assembly line (or uranium ore processing) seems reasonable. What are the disadvantages other than some costly redesign of the enrichment assembly line?
I reccomend doing about 100 different alternative energy pilot programs. If several of them prove feasable for 1% of Earth's energy needs we have put a small dent in the foreign oil problem. Neil

What's the redesign issue? France, Japan, and Norway are doing it right now. The US did it until the 1970's. Now we are arguing about some crazy plan to bury the rods at Yucca Mountain, instead of reusing them. As we speak, the US is brokering a deal to send our spent fuel to Russia. The media portrays this as Russia becoming the world's dumping ground. The truth is that Russia will reprocess the fuel and either use it, or sell it to the countries above, or make it part of the Iran nuclear deal.
Alternate energy plans are also just fine. But 1% wont cut it when China alone is on a meteoric annual rise in energy consumption. 1% is chump change.
TomT

[Gillianren]

I don't know if all the issues presented are up-to-date--this is obviously an old article--but reprocessing is covered here.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_229.html

[Kaptain K]

Don't you think our state of the art in battery powered vehicles will improve in the next generation?

No! At least not of the magnitude you are expecting. There are limits on the number of electrons you can cram into a given volume. We are within sight of those limits. Any further improvement wil be will be on the order of percent, not the orders of magnitude needed for battery powered vehicles to be more than a niche market.

[Ronald Brak]

No! At least not of the magnitude you are expecting. There are limits on the number of electrons you can cram into a given volume. We are within sight of those limits. Any further improvement wil be will be on the order of percent, not the orders of magnitude needed for battery powered vehicles to be more than a niche market.

Current technology seems adequate for electric cars for around town. Even if current batteries never improve in energy storage but only improve in reliability and price they will be adequate for town driving.

While I don't think electric cars will take off soon, hybrid cars are taking off and in the future plug in hybrids could become popular.

I've also done a back of the envelope calculation that indicate that if I had solar cells on my car as efficent as the ones used by NASA on space probes, with the limited amount of driving I do, most of the time I could run my car entirely off solar power provided I parked in the sun. This isn't practical at the moment, but in time it could be. (I haven't worked out how to stop the car getting really hot when it's parked in the sun, however.)

[TomT]

I don't know if all the issues presented are up-to-date--this is obviously an old article--but reprocessing is covered here.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_229.html

You have referred us to 23 year old technology. As I said France, Japan and Norway are doing it today as we sit here and do nothing.
Compare the cost of running a Yucca Mountain facility for 10000 years, with the cost of a reprocessing plant for the next 100, maybe 200, years. By then nuclear fusion plants will be replacing the present nuclear fission plants. The new generation fission based plants on the drawing board (Google Scientific American for the info) are more efficient, safer, and produce significantly less waste than the ones presently in service and aging in the US. Fusion plants are inherently much better than this. Compare the cost running a Yucca type facility for 10000 years with the cost of security necessary for a reprocessing plant for a couple hundred years, to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on the plutonium. What about the security of the plutonium in France, Japan, Norway, Russia? I'd rather have this under US control.
TomT

[TomT]

Current technology seems adequate for electric cars for around town. Even if current batteries never improve in energy storage but only improve in reliability and price they will be adequate for town driving.

While I don't think electric cars will take off soon, hybrid cars are taking off and in the future plug in hybrids could become popular.

I've also done a back of the envelope calculation that indicate that if I had solar cells on my car as efficent as the ones used by NASA on space probes, with the limited amount of driving I do, most of the time I could run my car entirely off solar power provided I parked in the sun. This isn't practical at the moment, but in time it could be. (I haven't worked out how to stop the car getting really hot when it's parked in the sun, however.)

Good thinking Ronald. We need forward thinking and practical solutions like this. And we need to get this problem kicked off dead center ASAP.
TomT
P.S. Put a windshield screen in your car when you park, and crack open the windows. You will be able to cool it off quickly inside with your A/C running on that wonderful solar power.

[Ronald Brak]

Good thinking Ronald. We need forward thinking and practical solutions like this. And we need to get this problem kicked off dead center ASAP.
TomT
P.S. Put a windshield screen in your car when you park, and crack open the windows. You will be able to cool it off quickly inside with your A/C running on that wonderful solar power.

Drawback is, I won't be able to get away with only washing my car once a year. And if I want to run the AC I'll need a system that more efficent that the one I currently have. Of course, with an electric car the AC can be more efficent because it won't be operating next to a hot internal combustion engine.

[cjl]

Current technology seems adequate for electric cars for around town. Even if current batteries never improve in energy storage but only improve in reliability and price they will be adequate for town driving.

While I don't think electric cars will take off soon, hybrid cars are taking off and in the future plug in hybrids could become popular.

I've also done a back of the envelope calculation that indicate that if I had solar cells on my car as efficent as the ones used by NASA on space probes, with the limited amount of driving I do, most of the time I could run my car entirely off solar power provided I parked in the sun. This isn't practical at the moment, but in time it could be. (I haven't worked out how to stop the car getting really hot when it's parked in the sun, however.)

Here is my thought:

Why bother with electric cars?

If we have all the electricity that we need, use it to make hydrogen through electrolysis. Use hydrogen to power cars, either through fuel cells or hydrogen fueled internal combustion. Battery problem solved.

[Ronald Brak]

Here is my thought:

Why bother with electric cars?

If we have all the electricity that we need, use it to make hydrogen through electrolysis. Use hydrogen to power cars, either through fuel cells or hydrogen fueled internal combustion. Battery problem solved.

Storing hydrogen has problems too. Although lightweight it has a high volume to energy ratio. I haven't compared the two recently, but I don't think hydrogen fuel cells do better than batteries at storing energy. Burning hydrogen is also much less energy efficent than using electric cars.

But the main problem I can see with burning hydrogen in internal combustion cars is infrastructure. There is no where around here where you can fill up on hydrogen. However, there are plenty of power sockets I can use to charge an electric car. If off peak power is used we already have the generating capacity for fleets of electric vechiles.

Of course, someone might develop a fuel cell that is very effective at storing and releaseing electrical energy. In that case we will use the fuel cell as a battery. But I think non fuel cell batteries are ahead at the moment.

Another posibility is that ultracapacitators will end up being used in cars, but I don't know how likely this is.

[Krevel]

Regarding the OP:
Regardless of what you think about global warming, what's wrong with NASA doing research into possible methods of controlling or regulating Earth's climate/weather? It may be a daunting, and perhaps impossible, task, but the issue surely bears investigation.

Regarding electric vehicles:
I was thinking of the Blue Rhino propane containers. If you're unfamiliar with these: you bring in your empty propane canister and exchange it for a different, full one. The same concept could be applied to electric car batteries. Of course, this would require a standardized configuration and some sort of mechanism to make the exchange, but that seems entirely do-able.
And what ever happened to the kinetic battery?

[TheBlackCat]

"Junk Science" is not a scientific term. It merely means "science I do not like". It is a purely political term used by someone to dismiss science whose implications he or she does not want to deal with or acknowlegde. It says nothing about whether the science is actually valid or not.

[cjl]

Storing hydrogen has problems too. Although lightweight it has a high volume to energy ratio. I haven't compared the two recently, but I don't think hydrogen fuel cells do better than batteries at storing energy. Burning hydrogen is also much less energy efficent than using electric cars.

But the main problem I can see with burning hydrogen in internal combustion cars is infrastructure. There is no where around here where you can fill up on hydrogen. However, there are plenty of power sockets I can use to charge an electric car. If off peak power is used we already have the generating capacity for fleets of electric vechiles.

Of course, someone might develop a fuel cell that is very effective at storing and releaseing electrical energy. In that case we will use the fuel cell as a battery. But I think non fuel cell batteries are ahead at the moment.

Another posibility is that ultracapacitators will end up being used in cars, but I don't know how likely this is.

I agree that it won't have any higher energy density than batteries. The difference is that when batteries are dead, you need to charge them for hours, wheras when you run out of hydrogen, you refill the tank in 2 minutes.

[Ronald Brak]

I agree that it won't have any higher energy density than batteries. The difference is that when batteries are dead, you need to charge them for hours, wheras when you run out of hydrogen, you refill the tank in 2 minutes.

Hmmm... I think that if oil prices raise either because of supply and demand or carbon taxes or both, then people will buy fuel efficent hybrids and plug in hybrids and people will use liquid fuel from current service station infrastructure when they need a quick top up. If the demand is low enough than conceivably this liquid fuel could be ethanol and other CO2 neutral biofuels. I don't see hydrogen taking off because of the current lack of fueling infrastructure. Governments could act to overcome this, but my guess is it would be more efficent just to tax carbon and let the market sort it out.

[Lurker]

Why is it impossible that humans can't affect "cyclicity through geologic time"? We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We know that humans are pouring more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We know that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing dramatically. Is it such a stretch to conclude that we're having an effect?

I agree that this is a reasonable conclusion to draw... however, the real question is how much of an effect are we having and what are the long term consequences. It is very difficult to determine with a great degree of accuracy how the temperature of the planet has fluctuated over the last 5000 years or so.

There is a lot of evidence that the little ice age was one of the coldest periods in the last several thousand years. If this is the case, we should not be surprised that there has been a warming trend since then. Even now, however, evidence indicates that our planet is colder than it has been for most if its geologic history. We live in an inter-glacial period... as with past inter-glacials this one has been characterized by any number of warming and cooling periods and will probably continue to see such instability. There are also many who believe that within the next 5 to 15 thousand years the ice will begin to advance again. There is no reason to believe that the last ice age has ended.


edited for spelling and grammar

[Ronald Brak]

I agree that this is a reasonable conclusion to draw... however, the real question is how much of an effect are we having and what are the long term consequences. It is very difficult to determine with a great degree of accuracy how the temperature of the planet has fluctuated over the last 5000 years or so.

There is a lot of evidence that the little ice age was one of the coldest periods in the last several thousand years. If this is the case, we should not be surprised that there has been a warming trend since then. Even now, however, evidence indicates that our planet is colder than it has been for most if its geologic history. We live in an inter-glacial period... as with past inter-glacials this one has been characterized by any number of warming and cooling periods and will probably continue to see such instability. There are also many who believe that within the next 5 to 15 thousand years the ice will begin to advance again. There is no reason to believe that the last ice age has ended.

Although the temperature of the earth varies over time and not all the causes are not well understood, the current elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should almost certainly cause the earth to be warmer than it would be otherwise. I have never heard a convincing arguement that increased levels of carbon dioxide will not result in increased temperatures. If anyone knows a convincing arguement, please tell.

[Lurker]

Although the temperature of the earth varies over time and not all the causes are not well understood, the current elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should almost certainly cause the earth to be warmer than it would be otherwise.

And your source for this statement. Certainly higher levels of carbon dioxide will result in elevated temperatures. However, there is great dispute concerning the statement I have bolded.