Don't bother designing green anymore?

What is the difficulty you're finding in designing a green product?  Its nearly impossible to even find non-RoHs pats anymore, the lower power consumption that you've already mentioned is a given, many contract manufacturers don't want to build a product that has lead so they don't contaminate their production lines.  I am interested in how this impacts anybody really negatively?

Getting past some of Derek's less constructive commentary - there is new technology for coal-power generators that make burning coal a lot more cleaner than before.  Unfortunately many coal mines have shut down because oil is easier to extract, but there are still vast reserves of coal.  Solar really gets me though.  The chemicals and the amount of energy that go into producing solar panels is astonishing.

Wormius wrote:

 

What is the difficulty you're finding in designing a green product?  Its nearly impossible to even find non-RoHs pats anymore, the lower power consumption that you've already mentioned is a given, many contract manufacturers don't want to build a product that has lead so they don't contaminate their production lines.  I am interested in how this impacts anybody really negatively?

Aye and that's the problem. Some sectors of the industry are exempt from lead-free. To go lead-free, elderly products have to be re-designed, re-tested for safety and EMC, field-tested and re-approved. You can't sweep it under the carpet by saying the products were probably overdue for replacement anyway. These are industry areas that move relatively slowly, being innately conservative and highly regulated, such as medical and avionics. So we get dragged into the lead-free shennanigans even though we are exempt.

I would like to make one simple point about CO2.  It is not a pollutant, it is a necessary gas for photosynthesis.  All of the concern about man generated CO2 being a problem is pure and total "BS".  There is NO scientific data that supports the theory that the CO2 generated in the last couple of centuries is above what would normally be in the atmosphere for this phase of the Normal earth cycle.

The Ice Core data clearly shows that for the last 600,000 years the earth has oscillated from a cold earth and a hot earth.  The CO2 levels have risen Naturally in each of the previous cycles.  Where does the CO2 come from you might ask?  It is trapped in the ice of the glaciers!  As the ice normally melts, it releases CO2 trapped in the ice molecules for the last 100,000 years.  There is an excellent research paper from a Polish scientist who proved conclusively that this is so.

The current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are consistent with the data from the last four cycles.  There is insufficient deviation from the normal expected level to indicate that mankind has changed the level significantly, especially in light of the massive amounts of CO2 released by volcanoes each year and the super massive amounts generated by the melting ice.

So I wish you would all stop freaking about man causing global warming, we are not!  Given the ice data, the only way that man is responsible is if we had the same level of technology existing on the planet during each of the last 600,000 years of the cycle.  There is absolutely no archiological evidence to support this model.  Global warming is a natural earth cycle.  If we do anything to stop it, then we go back into another ice age.  That would mean that about 95% of the life on the earth would die!

So stop worrying about something that is an artificial political theory used by idiots to try to create a competitive advantage using true VOODOO science.

If you check the geologic record you will see that the earth has bounced between a hot earth and a cold earth for the last 2.5 billion years.  It is what the planet does.  We are currently in an accelerating part of the cycle, which means that we will notice the rate of change increasing.  That is exactly what we have measured.  The next point at which the temperature will stabilize is in about 25,000 years.  So get used to the change, it is going to happen over a very long time.

If you do not think my data is accurate please check with the head of atmospheric sciences at MIT.  He has agreed with these findings and is a major critic of the people saying that mankind is responsible.  As I stated earlier, we are not.

PS if you live in low lying coastal areas, I suggest you start looking for new homes because the sea shall rise and there is nothing you can do about it.

Thanks,

DAB

I would like to make one simple point about CO2.  It is not a pollutant, it is a necessary gas for photosynthesis.  All of the concern about man generated CO2 being a problem is pure and total "BS".  There is NO scientific data that supports the theory that the CO2 generated in the last couple of centuries is above what would normally be in the atmosphere for this phase of the Normal earth cycle.

The Ice Core data clearly shows that for the last 600,000 years the earth has oscillated from a cold earth and a hot earth.  The CO2 levels have risen Naturally in each of the previous cycles.  Where does the CO2 come from you might ask?  It is trapped in the ice of the glaciers!  As the ice normally melts, it releases CO2 trapped in the ice molecules for the last 100,000 years.  There is an excellent research paper from a Polish scientist who proved conclusively that this is so.

The current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are consistent with the data from the last four cycles.  There is insufficient deviation from the normal expected level to indicate that mankind has changed the level significantly, especially in light of the massive amounts of CO2 released by volcanoes each year and the super massive amounts generated by the melting ice.

So I wish you would all stop freaking about man causing global warming, we are not!  Given the ice data, the only way that man is responsible is if we had the same level of technology existing on the planet during each of the last 600,000 years of the cycle.  There is absolutely no archiological evidence to support this model.  Global warming is a natural earth cycle.  If we do anything to stop it, then we go back into another ice age.  That would mean that about 95% of the life on the earth would die!

So stop worrying about something that is an artificial political theory used by idiots to try to create a competitive advantage using true VOODOO science.

If you check the geologic record you will see that the earth has bounced between a hot earth and a cold earth for the last 2.5 billion years.  It is what the planet does.  We are currently in an accelerating part of the cycle, which means that we will notice the rate of change increasing.  That is exactly what we have measured.  The next point at which the temperature will stabilize is in about 25,000 years.  So get used to the change, it is going to happen over a very long time.

If you do not think my data is accurate please check with the head of atmospheric sciences at MIT.  He has agreed with these findings and is a major critic of the people saying that mankind is responsible.  As I stated earlier, we are not.

PS if you live in low lying coastal areas, I suggest you start looking for new homes because the sea shall rise and there is nothing you can do about it.

Thanks,

DAB

Points well made and taken. However, I am not an expert (are you?) and for the sake of the argument one has to assume that global warming is caused by excess CO2. It is certainly worth questioning whether that is the case but it's not an engineering question and I for one would hesitate to dismiss mainstream views just because vested (equally vested?) interests dispute it.

A couple of points that do not require archeaological expertise. Firstly the strange fact that the mainstreamers, the natural cycle advocates and the global warming skeptics all agree: there is no point whatsoever in going green in the conventional sense - i.e. messing around with windmills and barrages to reduce our carbon footprint. Mainstream theory says we need to reduce emissions by 80% otherwise all we'll do is delay the effects by a few years but even the most optimistic green program doesn't get half way towards this. Global warming skeptics, of course, say there's nothing to worry about and thus arrive at the same conclusion. The natural cycle theorists are not so clear-cut. Some say the cycle is so robust there is nothing we can do about it, but others say it's driven by CO2 levels. In which case (second point for those who are counting) it doesn't matter whether the cause is human or natural. If it's natural we may still be able to halt GW. But we would have to reduce emissions and maybe even reverse them by sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere.

Even if there is no long-term hope of stopping it, there is no need to be fatalistic. If for example, we could delay GW for a couple of hundred years, it might be enough. The emergence of modern science from mediaeval and classical superstition is only a few hundred years old and we have only been aware of GW for a couple of decades. Avoidance of flooding and preservation of the arctic environment for a few centuries might give our descendants enough time to come up with truly radical solutions - not to mention definitive answers. So I cannot agree with "que sera sera". We must do what we can, cater for the worst plausible case (cf Fukushima which didn't) and then leave it to future generations to use their ingenuity and superior knowledge to ignore, cure or ameliorate as they see fit. Uncertainties in the science are one of the factors which make risk analysis such fun: roll the dice and see whether it comes up  "man-made", "natural cycle" or "no such thing" in due course, but meanwhile allow for each of them to be reasonably likely even though they cannot all be true at the same time

Point 3 or so - and all this ignores the obvious fact that no matter how bad the projected effects of GW, there comes a point when it is not worth getting hysterical and spending too much on it. Has anyone costed a program of mitigation: building (adequate) water barriers to keep low-lying areas going, for instance? Build barriers and then forget the problem, at least until your lawn goes black.

Hi Derek,

To answer your first question, I may well be one of a few handful of people on the planet with the depth of experience and intimate knowledge of most of the sciences involved to truley opine about the subject of GW.  Mostly, as a Systems Engineer, I am trained to evaluate science and its application to solving problems.  By using true science and the historical record, you can clearly see what is going to happen and the ice data tells us when to expect most of the changes.  They take a long time to manifest themselves.

I have been fortunate enough to have spent a lot of time with both the micro and macro effects of different gases and the atmospheric effects to know for certain which theory is correct.  I have worked with some of the most talented atmospheric physicists in the US.  They helped lead me to my conclusions.

As to what to do about GW, I agree that we should not panic and just begin to plan sensibly to deal with the results of the process.

I also agree that a lot of the Green Hysteria is greatly exaggerated.

In many ways we are actually wasting a lot more energy, which directly aggrevates the problems of GW in our misguided attempts to stop specific sources of gases that are not a problem.

People will need to leave low lying areas, basically anything below abour 40 meters above current sea levels.  But there is no hurry.  Best predictions are that it will take at least 10,000 years before things reach that state and a lot of other things can happen long before we have to worry about the sea rising.

On the plus side, the geologic record shows that as we go toward warm earth, the amouont of arable land will increase by at least a factor of two.  Also, the overall world temperature will even out across a wide swath along both sides of the equator.  They have discovered robust plant life and animals in northern Greenland, so Eric the Red was right, he was just a few millenia to early.

So I urge everyone who is interested in the Truth to do the same research I have and understand what is really going on.  I agree that we should stop polluting the planet and wasting resources.  I just don't trust politicians to make the right decisions to get us there.

Meanwhile, sit back, enjoy the current planetary conditions and relax.  Sometimes you just have to let systems run until they complete the cycle.  Attempts to stop the process prematurely could be very hazardous to everyone.

Thanks,

DAB

As you say, the climate cycle is slow-moving. However, 10,000 years for a 40m rise in sea level is a lot slower than 50-odd years for 2m. GW is not about changes over the order of tens of thousands of years, it is about the sudden lurch, already visible in direct human records, with time-scales measured in decades. It correlates with the biggest incident in global pollution for many thousands of years. And there is a plausible mechanism whereby one caused the other. It is not often that you get a correlation and a causal mechanism jump up and bite you on the nose at the same time, but in this case it is a smoking gun - plus "motive, method and opportunity". Actually, I'm open minded; just, as they say, not so open minded that I let the wind blow through it. In particular I'd like to know why a known massive increase in a known major component of the planetary climate mechanism should NOT result in a major change of temperature and yet something else just happens to come along and cause it anyway. Hence my skepticism about the skeptics.

We will just have to differ on this, until the science becomes clear enough for both of us.

What I do agree is that the current episode pales into insignificance compared with the changes that have occurred even since modern man appeared. I might almost agree that nature will adapt - if it's allowed to.  However, human beings in the short term matter at least as much as polar bears in the long term and the impact of a relatively small spurt of GW (whatever its cause) is greatly amplified by two factors unique to our species. One is that there are rather a lot of us, the other is that we have created systems to perpetuate economic inequality. As a result, the poor of the world will not be able to adapt. They will not be allowed to flee to higher ground. They will not be allowed to migrate relocate to where the food grows best. They will not be allowed to build sea defences themselves, but will have foreign "aid" wished upon them with crippling repayment terms. They will have their carbon credits confiscated as payment for basic survival. They will be perceived as the cause of the problem, not the victims, and told it is their own fault for breeding too fast. I would love to wave a magic wand and change human nature - or at least the global economic system - but I think the chances of that happening are rather less than the chances of cooperating to solve a problem (whatever its cause) with technology, which are themselves pretty slim.

Personally I'll stick with "Warming" rather than "Climate Change" as it uses fewer words to say more

Hi Cabe,

The NASA data is very interesting, mostly because it verifies the increase in CO2 coming from the melting ice.  It did not show any correlation to the industrial areas where Human generated CO2 should be concentrated.

As I stated before, the earth is warming, that is not the issue.  The issue is if there is sufficient data to blame Human industrialization as its cause.  From the data collected and presented so far, there is no correlation. There are assumptions, but no smoking gun.

My main point is that the earth goes through these warming and cooling cycles all of the time.  We are currently in a time phase where the rate of change is changing the most, so we are indeed noticing the change.  Unfortunately, there is very little that we can do about it.

I fully back all changes in manufacturing techniques to make human produced products less toxic to the planet.  That is indeed an area where we have full control.  Stopping CO2 build up in the atmosphere however, is not something we can change enough to make a difference.

The climate will change.  Humans will either adapt or die.  If you continue to live in areas near sea level, you are going to get wet.  The key element is that we have plenty of time to prepare and deal with the changes.

Don't Panic!

Thanks

DAB

There is no reason at all to expect CO2 to be regional on any relevant scale. Its life-time in the atmosphere is about 100 years; the mixing time is just one or two. It has plenty of time to spread out.

Matter of fact, CO2 from melting ice will be of a different isotopic composition from burning coil and oil, so the melting ice vs fossil fuel question can be settled with complete certainty if anyone cares to Google it.

The other important point is this. If that graph is to be trusted then it provides a compelling argument that industrialization is the cause of elevated CO2 levels. Suppose for a moment that the fact that the graph goes vertical at just the right time is nothing more than a coincidence. As Harry Hill would say, "What are the chances of that happening?" Well in this case it's easy enough to calculate. It's just the probability of human society hitting industrialization within about +/-100 years of such a surge. On the data shown, that would be about one in two thousand at the most. Apply Bayesian probability and it becomes absurd to say "there are assumptions but no smoking gun". The proof is right there. I cannot force you to accept it but proof is proof whether its detractors call it "assumptions" or not.

Data can only be trusted if it can be independently verified.  Data can only be compared if the data collection methods are under controlled and repeatable protocols.

The ice core data is flawed by several issues.

1.  We do not know if the CO2 captured in the ice represents to total or only a fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere at the time the air was captured in the glaciation process.

2.  We do not know at what altitude of the air captured.

3.  The ice data shows a 100,000 year cycle, but we do not know what drives the cycle.  Until we understand what drives the cycle, we cannot put the data into any context, especially in comparing todays measurements with data from times past.

4.  The ice data represents samples from a very few places on the planet.  There is great uncertainty if the data it shows can be extrapolated over the entire surface of the planet.

5.  The NASA data shows a fairly wide range of CO2 concentration across the surface of the planet.  It also shows that over ten years in which accurate measurements have been made, we do not see a consistent mixing of the CO2 levels beyond the regional surface wind bands that wrap the planet.  The spatial distribution of the CO2 levels is consistent with the source of the gas being from the ice and the CO2 appears to remain in the general area in which it is released.

Further, the areas where man made CO2 is generated shows that the vegetation existing in those areas appear to be absorbing the CO2 at a level consistent with its generation.  The areas where CO2 has high concentration in the industrial areas is in the Rocky Mountains, the Alps and the Himalayan mountains, which is consisten with the ice being the source of the gas.  The localization of the concentrations is consistent with the lack of vegetation in those regions where the ice has just recently melted away.  As the vegetation becomes restored, the CO2 levels there and in the polar regions should fall consistent with the geologic record of revegitation after each ice age.

6.  The ice data represents an average CO2 concentration over hundreds if not thousands of years.  We therefore cannot compare spot readings of today with averaged data from times past.  Especially without accounting for the spatial displacement of the ice formation, the retention of the levels of gas soluable in the ice and the altitude at which the capture occurred.

So where should these issues lead us?

1.  We can verify that global warming is occuring and is a normal process that appears to follow a cyclical 100,000 year pattern.

2.  We do not know what cosmic forces have led to this cycle, but it has been very consistent for the last 5 to 600,000 years.

3.  The recent NASA data has verified that the ice is a major source of the CO2 gasses released at this approximate point in the cycle.

4.  The NASA data has identified that the gas concentrations appear to follow a spatial distribution with a limit to gas mixing due to the current wind bands circling the planet.

5.  Given the information on the spatial entrapment of the gases separating the polar concentrations from the temperate zone concentrations, the industrial generation of CO2 does not appear to be overwhelming the vegetation ability to absorb the gas and convert it to oxygen and trap the carbon.

6.  The geologic data identifies that the revegetation of the areas once covered by ice will lag the ice melting stage and CO2 release by roughly a thousand years, which accounts for the offset between the ice core temperature graph and the CO2 level graph.

7.  Comparing recent ten year or even 200 years of CO2 measurements with those made from 100,000's of years ago is comparing apples and oranges because we do not know under what conditions the gases were trapped withing the ice.  We know that the ice does trap CO2 as the glaciers form, but we do not know what percentage is retained and how much of the total escapes during the process.

8.  Engineering 101, when you see spikes or discontinuities in the data, you always recheck the measurements and reassess the experiment.  Double check your error analysis.  Try to obtain corroberating data to verify your data collection protocol and analysis methods.

9.  Never trust data that you cannot independently verify and validate.

So my engineering experience tells me that the case against industrial generated CO2 is at this point still circumstantual.  The witnesses do not have air tight (pun intended) alibi's.  The unknown cause of the global warming cycle definately leaves room for reasonable doubt.  Especially since the gas volumetric analysis of the concentrations do not add up.

So should be clean up our industrial processes to reduce CO2 emissions?  Yes we should, not because it is changing the rate of global warming, but because the current manufacturing techniques are wasteful, inefficient, polluting and killing people every day.

Can the pace of global warming be changed by direct actions by the population?  At this point of our technology and our ignorance of the driving force behind the 100,000 year cycle it is doubtful that we know enough to do the right things to change the effect.  We clearly need to improve our data collection and refine our understanding of the warming cycle, but it is too early to say what actions we could do now that would have any affect, let alone a positive affect.

When it comes to theories, they are just guess work until the math works, they can be independently verified (espicially by the skeptics) and they can accurately predict what happens next.  Right now, the math does not work.  The models cannot tell us what will happen tomorrow, let alone what will happen in a century or a millenium.

Before I am willing to let polititians make legislations, rules and regulations, I want full scientifically verified answers to the issues outlined above.

To be a good scientist or engineer, you have to trust, but verify and validate all of the pieces of your system.  On the issue of GW, we do not even know what all of these pieces are, let alone which part they all play in the process.

Remember, change is the only true constant in the universe.  Many things can affect the rate of change, but we cannot predict the direction of change or all of the implications of each change.

I promise, this is my last post on this issue.

Thanks,

DAB