Good one spock. I happened to listen to NPR on the way to work the other day (about a month ago). The issue on focus was panama canal. They were talking about that lake (whose name I don't instantly recollect) thru which ships pass. Currently, many nations are favouring making bigger ships (bigger than the current biggest one). The proposed ships may not be able to pass thru Panama Canal and so need to widen the lake. As it is, every time a ship passes thru this lake lots of water is wasted (around 65,000 gallons) into the sea (I think). And this lake is also the supplier of water to the nearby areas where people live. Given the amount of deforestation and frequent rainfall shortages means bad news for users of this lake. I don't coherently recollect all that issues associated Panama Canal, but NPR had a good programme on that. Here is a link from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87851345

Oh, Matt, Matt, Matt, aren't we just a HORRIBLE nation!!?? :rolleyes: :laff:


Chess Fan

Here is a good link on "Global Warming" for 2008. It says that in 2008, the warming would be less.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm

Another intersting link on Hydrogen power that we discussed earlier. Boeing has tested a manned hydrogen-powered plane recently. The link says, some guys are have tested even solar-powered planes (unmanned though). Read this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7330311.stm

PS: Wish Ken, spock and Ed Yetman contributed more and more in this thread.

Would love to, but I am largely out of new material.

From my viewpoint folks have started working on finding workable solutions, but many of the ideas are far from large implementation.

Solar panels are dropping precipitously in price, but the production of the low priced panels is too small to meet major needs anytime soon. As I understand it (and I would love to be corrected if wrong) much of the production of solar panels is being sold in Europe.

Wind energy is growing but needs to grow substantially more before we can start shutting down coal burning plants. I have no data but I suspect that the growth in wind power is likely just meeting the growth in demand so that new coal plants don't need to be built.

Folks are still trying to work out what is and is not environmentally friendly on a number of fronts. Shipping of food/water, paper or plastic, etc.

Alternative fueled vehicles may or may not be right around the corner. Hydrogen can be easily extracted from water with aluminum as a catalyst. But the repeated refining of the aluminum takes a tremendous amount of energy (wind or solar?) and we have no infrastructure. Electricity looks promising for short distance vehicles. Perfect for the HS student who needs to get to school and possibly work, but not suitable for long distance commuters.

And now I find out that not only is fresh water an issue all by itself, but it enters into the equation for global climate change and energy usage. Moving bottled water is energy expensive and purifying salt water is also energy expensive in addition to being expensive in other ways.

I may have missed a topic, but I really don't see a lot of new material. I suppose we could pick paper versus plastic, or similar topic, and discuss when you should choose one versus the other.

Okay, one new point: The U.S. has been criticized for not signing off on Kyoto. But the U.S. has been making progress with or without a treaty. Much of that progress is originating on U.S. college campuses.

Yesterday three college leaders gave testimony to that effort to a senate committee:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?F...02-666c3c9bb8f4

The second presenter is the Chancellor at the college my daughter will be attending and I had the pleasure of sitting at her table for lunch a couple months back. (Aside: as part of their undergraduate scholarship packages UMM often includes a research stipend!)

I haven't listened to the full testimony yet, but UMM is apparently going to start burning corn stalks and prairie grass rather than natural gas. I know that several other colleges have (or will soon) be building windmills and have replaced incandescents with fluorescents.

My own campus took a while to get started, but there are now plans in motion to reduce the carbon footprint of the campus.

Well, I APPLAUD the U.S. for not signing off on Kyoto!!


Chess Fan

And that's fine.

Now that I've at least half-listened to the full hearing I can report that one of the senators present praised the campuses for the efforts that they had made so far. He then pointed out that no law imaginable would likely have been as effective as their own local initiatives.

Each campus was addressed the problems in somewhat different ways depending on the needs of the campus.

I do disagree somewhat with the senator. I think that a law can be crafted to specify goals without specifying the means. I think that if you specify only a limited range of specific options for solving a problem you get into the "one size fits all" mentality and that is rarely useful.

There was some discussion of pricing carbon emission costs accurately so that market forces could act. I didn't follow the discussion closely, but I'll bet it was interesting.

While I wouldn't applaud the US for not signing Kyoto I wasn't too sure if Kyoto was an effective way to reduce emissions, and suspected it most likely was a waste of time in that regard. On the other hand I think the symbolism of all the countries coming together to sign up to do something together was probably more important.

I think the U.S. lost a great deal of credibility by not signing up even though Kyoto was probably ineffective, as I said, but in this case I think the symbolic act was more important---but I don't know that either...that's just a general feeling. Seems to be a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't, but at least if you do, you can be damned along with all the other countries.

Think the effectiveness of Kyoto is one for the historians to decide as they'll be able to see how Kyoto influenced ideas/initiatives still in the future...too soon for us to tell right now. E.g. maybe many local initiatives took root either because locals recognized Kyoto was ineffective, or they thought it was effective and wanted to do their part in reducing emissions. Just some half-formed ideas anyway...

Now the consequences of climate change have become really serious.

Scientist warns climate change will impact beer production

To make things even worse, the global warming will mean beer will stay cold for shorter periods of time.