Global warming

Now see there you go accepting media projection while not researching both sides of the argument. As everyone knows , and Catscratch will give his highly scientific studies to back me up, wheat definitely is the superior grain.


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I stand by those statements! I may have to eat some crow though... the past week we have seen temps with highs around 0 degrees and lows well into the negatives, lots of snow also. In 3ish decades of plotting this is probably the first time I've seen wheat ignored. Those northern guys might just be right about wheat not standing up to brutal winters (joking, I know they are right about winters and what grows there). I did take a note from their page and dropped some trees for browse. Deer have hammer those trees!
 
Regarding wind power as an option, may want to ask the folks in Texas what they think as most of the wind turbines are frozen thus contributing to the train wreck they are having.

Beyond that I'll add they are more destructive to the ecology than most admit.
Only a small percent of the offline power is green... do not buy into that PR pitch. I see some politicians were quick to capitalize on peoples misfortunes real quick - grab those votes while people are hurting! Booyah! The vast majority of what is down is coal, oil, and gas fired issues... nothing's perfect and "nothing" down there is made for the cold. If the conventional stuff would be working even marginally close to capacity there would not be an issue. (and ...Im fully aware how little drops in one sector ripples through the rest of the power grid - but they knew wind is not reliable and goes off grid all the time, its backed up by conventional).

The rest of this is just my bs....

Wind is just a piece of the pie and you talked about how conditions - unsustainable ones generate solutions -- I am relatively sure wind is just the initial baby steps/stumbles of and in the changes that are coming. We are a hydrocarbon based economy and breaking that backbone is not what the people throwing out the money to keep your politicians paid off want to see go bye bye. They are doing everything they can to keep us dumbed down and doing what we have been for the last century plus. Same way this county is going to have to get past reconstituted dinosaur poo for ag fertilizer the exact same argument exists for getting off the dinosaur juice for our vehicles -- no difference, zero its just what you choose to believe. Staying hooked on that crack is keeping us from leaping forward as a country.
We will always need oil it would just be nice not to squander "our" natural resources so that con artists and non nationals can get wealthy and leave a crap mess behind so your kids and parents can go through chemo treatments. The easy stuff has been drilled out, the hard stuff is being extracted now. What is left after that will cost a fortune to pull out. When you have to dump in and pressurize a toxic polymer solution of crap into your ground/deep ground water to push out crude into drift wells you really should question what the hell your doing to your back yard. Realistically Texas bent (WTI) is now just a reference term. The sweet easy stuff is mostly gone - its all dirty now.

Gas and oil runs a tight line on what they invest in for infrastructure, they have never been about having to much of anything. They flare off excess propane all the time when they hit storage capacity, instead of spending money on pressure storage structures its cheaper for them to flare off reserves then dump them on the open market and drive down prices. I know it takes a whole summer to flare off two years worth of gross sales/storage of propane just to make more room the LP being made off new incoming crude refining processes. That is done all over the county. If the average American knew how much LP was flared off just to keep the prices up, there would be gallows set up all over this county. That process/practice pales in comparison to how much natural gas gets jetted off. When you drive by a refinery and see all those candles being lit... beyond the little ones,.... but the real flare stacks if their roaring that is all product going up in smoke.

Its all a smoke show put on for kids.... Global warming is pure bs.... its too simple of a term for most people to grasp,... they take the literal meaning and run with it.... and point and say see, see.... see! Crapping in your bath water or putting DDT in your kid crib is what it should have been called. Actions have consequences, the bills do have to get paid and Spades trump Dibbles!
 
Cost of electricity (in dollars) going forward is only going UP UP UP! Can we all agree on that?
 
Only a small percent of the offline power is green... do not buy into that PR pitch. I see some politicians were quick to capitalize on peoples misfortunes real quick - grab those votes while people are hurting! Booyah! The vast majority of what is down is coal, oil, and gas fired issues... nothing's perfect and "nothing" down there is made for the cold. If the conventional stuff would be working even marginally close to capacity there would not be an issue. (and ...Im fully aware how little drops in one sector ripples through the rest of the power grid - but they knew wind is not reliable and goes off grid all the time, its backed up by conventional).
I don't live in Texas and would quickly agree that politics love to capitalize on misfortune and rarely take responsibility much less effective creative thinking.My comment was from something I read in the WSJ. For brevity here is a paragraph that if accurate points to part of the problem down there including the reliance on wind turbines.

he problem is Texas’s overreliance on wind power that has left the grid more vulnerable to bad weather. Half of wind turbines froze last week, causing wind’s share of electricity to plunge to 8% from 42%. Power prices in the wholesale market spiked, and grid regulators on Friday warned of rolling blackouts. Natural gas and coal generators ramped up to cover the supply gap but couldn’t meet the surging demand for electricity—which half of households rely on for heating—even as many families powered up their gas furnaces. Then some gas wells and pipelines froze.
In short, there wasn’t sufficient baseload power from coal and nuclear to support the grid. Baseload power is needed to stabilize grid frequency amid changes in demand and supply. When there’s not enough baseload power, the grid gets unbalanced and power sources can fail. The more the grid relies on intermittent renewables like wind and solar, the more baseload power is needed to back them up.
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Global warming and climate change are hot button issues to be sure...highly politicized right down party lines. There can be no doubt the world is getting warmer, correct? Is the struggle then whether this change is human caused or not?

Here's my take...it's the teacher in me. I know it's not quite as simple as this. But it helps.

Global Warming Humanity Acts Humanity Takes no Action
Real and human caused We save the planet We lose our planet
Not happening We waste time and resources No effect...life goes on as normal

It's kind of like the old saying..."I'd rather live like there is a God, and find out there isn't, then act like there isn't, and find out there is."

I'd rather we assume global warming is real and take action to try to stop it....and if in the end it was all based on false data or a great lie...well, we will have wasted time and energy. Assuming it's not real and then being wrong about that assumption is the worst case scenario.
I could possibly buy that position except for one fact...
There is no government agency, or bureaucrat, or organization that could even begin to pull all of the countless threads that would be needed to "fix" it. These idiots can't even run the driver's license bureau, let alone move all the levers it would take to change the climate...IF, in fact that it could even be done.
And we are always one minute away from mother nature throwing a wrench into all of our grand schemes.
Who are you gonna trust to manage it? Washington DC? The UN? China? Maybe the New World Order? Maybe the Great Reset can manage it? They plan to manage everything else in our lives.
"Fixing" the weather will certainly destroy freedom. Without freedom, we will surely parish. Show me one communist country that isn't a polluting mess. Freedom creates the wealth needed for ingenuity and creativity to address problems.
BTW, just what IS the optimum temperature the planet should be? How do we know that the earth isn't in the process of a needed climate adjustment. Its adjusted and recovered long before humans existed.
 
Global warming and climate change are hot button issues to be sure...highly politicized right down party lines. There can be no doubt the world is getting warmer, correct? Is the struggle then whether this change is human caused or not?

Here's my take...it's the teacher in me. I know it's not quite as simple as this. But it helps.

Global Warming Humanity Acts Humanity Takes no Action
Real and human caused We save the planet We lose our planet
Not happening We waste time and resources No effect...life goes on as normal

It's kind of like the old saying..."I'd rather live like there is a God, and find out there isn't, then act like there isn't, and find out there is."

I'd rather we assume global warming is real and take action to try to stop it....and if in the end it was all based on false data or a great lie...well, we will have wasted time and energy. Assuming it's not real and then being wrong about that assumption is the worst case scenario.
The world is experiencing a warming trend, it is not getting warmer and there is a big difference. People look at short term trends and claim "planet killer", well it's simply not true.
Until we reach 90+ degree global temperature it won't be the hottest the planet has ever been.
Glaciers are melting, well historically speaking the Earth was twice either completely ice free or it was nearly ice free, the settled science isn't settled ever.
Oceans are rising at 1/10th of an inch per year. What are we expecting? Ocean levels rise and fall somewhat unpredictably quite literally forever. We have observed and understand roughly 20% of our Oceans, how do you measure something that is unpredictable and historically fluctuates? I can throw out a few plausible suggestions for the reason we are currently gaining 1/10 of an inch per year, that is never mentioned in the science they used. Tectonic plates shifting, Russia and Alaska were once close enough to form a land bridge so we know that there is movement. What is the volcanic activity doing under the surface of the Oceans we only understand 20% of?
Things like Fukishima daiichi nuclear disaster is the biggest thing affecting our Planet right now.
 
Green energy has been here a long time. It’s just that the hippies were afraid of it.

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I've worked on building a couple of those nukes. I can tell you from first-hand experience that what's coming out of those cooling towers is just steam .................. plain old steam. Much of the public thinks it's radioactive pollution - It's NOT. Huge pumps pump the cooling water from a closed-loop system up to the top of the cooling towers and then it free-falls like a waterfall inside the towers to circular basins at the bottom. Falling in free air inside the towers releases much of the heat from the hot water in the cooling water systems.

Much as your vehicle radiator cools your engine without being part of the combustion process that runs your engine, so is the closed-loop cooling system in a nuclear power house. The water doesn't become radioactive. It's just hot water.

And also from having worked on building nukes, I can tell you that accidents such as Three Mile Island won't happen anymore. After that accident, all nuclear plants were retro-fitted with redundant control systems, where TMI only had one control system. So when it failed .............. they were S.O.L. to stop an accident. Since TMI, control systems are electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and manually operated. Ifg one method of control fails, there are 3 other ones. If all the automatic systems fail, the reaction can be stopped by manually putting the control rods in place to stop the nuclear reaction. I worked on the bowels of the reactor ............... so I know how they operate.

Nuclear energy is VERY clean compared to coal, gas, or oil-fired power houses. No CO2 or other greenhouse gasses emitted. The only "waste" is the spent fuel rods - and French engineers have come up with processes that can extract more good use from spent fuel rods to further reduce their radioactivity. Centuries worth of power-supplying spent fuel rods can be stored in ceramic cylinders underground. Those cylinders have been tested by ramming full-speed diesel locomotives into them without breakage.

The problem with nuclear power is the industry itself. It does a poor job of explaining the processes, visuals (cooling towers & steam), and all the safety systems put in place after TMI happened. Those upgrades and redundant control systems are known as "TMI upgrades / retrofits" .................... because they were put in place AFTER TMI. Public safety was the overriding factor in those upgrades. EVERY piece of material - down to the last nut & washer - is inspected, tested and approved by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). EVERY weld, EVERY anchor hole drilled, EVERY support - ....................EVERYTHING is engineered & inspected. NOT ONE MOVE is made without engineering approval. Average material from a hardware store or Home Depot / Lowes / Menards is NOT EVER used in a nuclear plant. Specialty suppliers only!! Such stringent measures and safety precautions are NOT taught to the public, ( which they should be! ) so the public doesn't trust nuclear plants.
 
The same people that preach about man made climate change are the same group that want open borders. That is nothing more than hypocrisy.
People living in those countries they're coming from don't have near the carbon footprint as we do here in the US. So bringing more of them here generates more planet killing things we have that they don't and we allegedly want to reduce that, not increase that.
 
Troubles Trees , post #166 - The problem with the Fukishima nuclear plant is that they built it right next to the ocean - being in the 'ring-of fire" Pacific volcanic / earthquake zone - and in a low enough spot that a tidal wave / tsunami could completely flood it !!! Piss-poor planning / location.
 
"They" dont give 2 poops about reducing anything other than your bank account.
 
Here's a map of every wind turbine in the country. You can zoom right down on top of individual turbines. The largest towers in our state are around 600' tall and 4.3 MW. The proposed project we're hoping doesn't get enough enrolled, and which we declined, are rumored to be the new largest in the state. 6 MW and taller than the St. Louis Arch. Our county has ridiculously loose ordinances. The board rarely says no to anything. Wish they could stick these things on a bunch of federal land where no one will see them.

 
If we could find a flux capacitor and Doc Brown's DeLorean maybe we could drag this message thread back to where farm tractors were introduced for replacing teams of horses and to a time when corn hybrids were being planted for the first time (it took something like 14-years to convince everyone of their superiority). Wouldn't it be fun to hear all the reasons why none of that would work?
If you weren't allowed to use it for monitary gain, I know I'd go back and sit a couple of stands I'd talked myself out of sitting at the time.
 
How come the wind turbines in Texas break but the ones in Iowa were working Monday when I drove by and it was -20?
 
I've worked on building a couple of those nukes. I can tell you from first-hand experience that what's coming out of those cooling towers is just steam .................. plain old steam. Much of the public thinks it's radioactive pollution - It's NOT. Huge pumps pump the cooling water from a closed-loop system up to the top of the cooling towers and then it free-falls like a waterfall inside the towers to circular basins at the bottom. Falling in free air inside the towers releases much of the heat from the hot water in the cooling water systems.

Much as your vehicle radiator cools your engine without being part of the combustion process that runs your engine, so is the closed-loop cooling system in a nuclear power house. The water doesn't become radioactive. It's just hot water.

And also from having worked on building nukes, I can tell you that accidents such as Three Mile Island won't happen anymore. After that accident, all nuclear plants were retro-fitted with redundant control systems, where TMI only had one control system. So when it failed .............. they were S.O.L. to stop an accident. Since TMI, control systems are electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and manually operated. Ifg one method of control fails, there are 3 other ones. If all the automatic systems fail, the reaction can be stopped by manually putting the control rods in place to stop the nuclear reaction. I worked on the bowels of the reactor ............... so I know how they operate.

Nuclear energy is VERY clean compared to coal, gas, or oil-fired power houses. No CO2 or other greenhouse gasses emitted. The only "waste" is the spent fuel rods - and French engineers have come up with processes that can extract more good use from spent fuel rods to further reduce their radioactivity. Centuries worth of power-supplying spent fuel rods can be stored in ceramic cylinders underground. Those cylinders have been tested by ramming full-speed diesel locomotives into them without breakage.

The problem with nuclear power is the industry itself. It does a poor job of explaining the processes, visuals (cooling towers & steam), and all the safety systems put in place after TMI happened. Those upgrades and redundant control systems are known as "TMI upgrades / retrofits" .................... because they were put in place AFTER TMI. Public safety was the overriding factor in those upgrades. EVERY piece of material - down to the last nut & washer - is inspected, tested and approved by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). EVERY weld, EVERY anchor hole drilled, EVERY support - ....................EVERYTHING is engineered & inspected. NOT ONE MOVE is made without engineering approval. Average material from a hardware store or Home Depot / Lowes / Menards is NOT EVER used in a nuclear plant. Specialty suppliers only!! Such stringent measures and safety precautions are NOT taught to the public, ( which they should be! ) so the public doesn't trust nuclear plants.

that was a really long winded way to say you agree with me.:emoji_laughing::emoji_stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: But thanks..
 
It seems to me that wind and solar just aren't the answer?
Alot of downside, not much upside?
 
Anyone been to Duluth? You northerners are getting quite the dose of global warming... I just saw Duluth and Brainerd are on their 12th straight day of 20 below the average temps.
 
I like the hydro option the best. Water is always moving(ocean).
 
Anyone been to Duluth? You northerners are getting quite the dose of global warming... I just saw Duluth and Brainerd are on their 12th straight day of 20 below the average temps.
I'm 40 minutes from Brainerd and it's been brutal to say the least. A good test for my diesel truck for sure. Watching the weather in Texas is mild compared to regular weather 5-6 months a year here.
 
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