Busch administration clearly a traitor to reason!

[Antisthenes]

http://trendlines.ca/energy.htm maybe?

[csintexas]

The only way to actually determine peak oil is from hindsight.

When you are drinking soda from a straw into a cup you can't actually see you don't know you have hit bottom until you hear the slurping sound.

Most estimates that I have seen say we are there or real close. I believe it is true that most of the recent cost increase is due to speculation (but this is an event that was predicted). Oil conservation would have greatly mitigated this natural free market occurrence.

Peak oil does not mean we can't accelerate production, these two things are not completely interdependent until you get closer to the end. So we could temporarily produce more which would lower the cost of oil but this is a very short term solution.

Many of these peak or reserve estimates are based on technically recoverable oil which will never be recovered. For example: Canadian tar sands. Only a small portion is shallow enough for pit mining (which recovers something like 80%) but the rest has to be dissolved and pumped up which only recovers something like 10%, or it is in extremely deep water or it is the leftovers after a well has been sucked dry or it is poor quality, etc..

[modjohn]

Regardless of how many oil wells are drilled, world production cannot seem to get much above 85 million barrels per day. The reasons for this are many and varied; weather, political unrest, war, pipeline bottlenecks, etc.

Is the inability to produce significantly more than 85 million barrels a day over a sustained period of time an indication that we have reached peak oil production?

[Architorture]

those statistics that i mentioned come from a seemingly widely distributed and disputed large scale study that took place sometime around 2000...and it gave the figure of about 10%...so if it were true then...i'd imagine 8 years later the percentage is even higher...

now i said it is disputed and those who dispute it, most notably UC berkeley, came up with the claim of about 4%...which they seemed pretty convinced of...again in 99-2000...

so again even if the 4% is the right number it is a huge amount of energy at that time to mostly support - potential abuse - sites... today of course most of it is used to power stalking...i mean social networking...

what do you need more...the full spectrum light of an incandescent light or to know instantly that a friend of your cousins boyfriend updated their profile picture?


obviously the internet lets us do alot of things that do in fact allow us to avoid using energy in a different way...such as telecommuting and doing other such business online... but it also allows us to spend TONS more energy doing things that we would otherwise not be doing at all... such as store trillions of pictures of no particular value that required ever expanding amounts of storage and energy to maintain...

[Architorture]

'potential abuse' in the previous post should be "p o r n o"

[csintexas]

Maybe someday we will have to make a choice: large house with no ac or computer or small house with ac and computer. (personally I would trade in my current 3250 sq.ft. for 500 if it came to that choice)

[Architorture]

some day we will just live in the computer....we can all be furries in second life

[solidred]

"1) Global warming is not a "highly debatable theory". It is a highly tested, cross-checked, broadly proven body of scientific fact, backed by an unprecedented global scientific consensus. That being the case, it is only correct to present it as such."

I figured you had views on Global Warming ever since you posted that 'Al Gore Rocked the House' message on Myspace Kevin

To respond to the quote above, it's true there's a broad, scientifically understood, consensus that Global Warming is a phenomenon. What's not universally agreed, not even amongst the scientific community involved in collating the data from which the IPCC reports have been based, is that Global Warming is chiefly caused by CO2 or chiefly caused by CO2 by-products of human activity. Secondly, it's not agreed that Global Warming, per se, is a problem above and beyond fluctuations in climate recorded historically. Thirdly, climate models used to predict the likely effects of such warming vary widely - vastly - in the degree of warming expected. Fourthly, single-vision approaches; combatting CO2 emissions = environmentalism may not only direct attention away from more pressing environmental and human problems around the world, but they might also be counter-productive in terms of combatting the perceived problem.
This isn't a petty squabbling over mere details in the face of an apocalypse. This is fundamental stuff.

[csintexas]

This is from the EPA:

State of Knowledge
As with any field of scientific study, there are uncertainties associated with the science of climate change. This does not imply that scientists do not have confidence in many aspects of climate science. Some aspects of the science are known with virtual certainty1, because they are based on well-known physical laws and documented trends. Current understanding of many other aspects of climate change ranges from “very likely” to “uncertain.”
What's Known

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:

* Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
* The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
* An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
* The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
* Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

Top of page
What's Very Likely?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations" (IPCC, 2007). In short, a growing number of scientific analyses indicate, but cannot prove, that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are contributing to climate change (as theory predicts). In the coming decades, scientists anticipate that as atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise, average global temperatures and sea levels will continue to rise as a result and precipitation patterns will change.

Top of page
What's Not Certain?

Important scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms. Answering these questions will require advances in scientific knowledge in a number of areas:

* Improving understanding of natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, land-use changes, the warming or cooling effects of pollutant aerosols, and the impacts of changing humidity and cloud cover.
* Determining the relative contribution to climate change of human activities and natural causes.
* Projecting future greenhouse emissions and how the climate system will respond within a narrow range.
* Improving understanding of the potential for rapid or abrupt climate change.

Addressing these and other areas of scientific uncertainty is a major priority of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The CCSP is developing twenty-one Synthesis and Assessment products to advance scientific understanding of these uncertainty areas by the end of 2008. More information.

[csintexas]

So there is widespread agreement amongst the scientist who's job it was to study this matter that rising Co2 levels are very likely (90% certainty or more) to cause the Earth to warm.

In fact early estimates turned out to be conservative and the speed at which the temperature is increasing is actually greater.

This should be like a big red flag that perhaps we are not taking this seriously enough.

Nothing will ever be universally agreed upon, even simple things (see debate on creationism)

Yes climate prediction models vary widely. The Earth is a complicated system. But to continue on our present coarse knowing what we do know is taking a huge risk.

Co2 does not = happiness. There is no correlation between Co2 and contentment.

[csintexas]

In fact maybe there is a a correlation between low Co2 levels and contentment:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/International/story?id=1296605

[Antisthenes]

EPA can not be trusted until Bush leaves as he has censored them on numerous occasions.

[Kevin]

Well... Specifically:

"There's a broad, scientifically understood, consensus that Global Warming is" ... in fact ... "chiefly caused by CO2 [and] chiefly caused by CO2 by-products of human activity."

Documented, intentional misinformation campaigns aside, that is not an open scientific question. The answer is clear and well-understood.

"Secondly" ... in fact ... "There's a broad, scientifically understood, consensus" ... "that Global Warming, per se, is a problem above and beyond fluctuations in climate recorded historically."

That is not an open scientific question, either. The answer is equally clear and well-understood.

These key points are exactly what is clear among "amongst the scientific community involved in collating the data from which the IPCC reports have been based."

The chief source of wide differences in the temperature predictions in climate models is differences in the senarios run, due to the inherently unpredictable factor of human behavior over time. Only a fractional and manageable amount of the variation in current major climate model predictions is due to uncertainties in the models, input data, or understanding of natural systems.

I'd be interested to hear what "more pressing environmental and human problems around the world" would you prefer to focus on instead?

There are many problems, of course. Few have the truly worldwide scope magnitude and shared base of global warming. There are even fewer environmental and human problems around the world that are not likely to be worsened by global warming over time.

Among those, which are particularly related to the professional responsibilities of architects and other environmental design professionals?

Yes, indeed, this is fundamental stuff, and I'm glad we're discussing it!

[djswan]

Eureka! I found knowledge. Knowledge is good, very fundamental indeed, so is beer.

It may come down to BEER! being the best answer as to some of the predictions I have seen. Nice cool refreshing beer.

[csintexas]

The fact that the EPA is known to have taken the administrations side on this issue makes it all the more interesting that they make statements like the ones quoted above which acknowledge the problem to be very likely.

If it where really a choice between low Co2 emissions and happiness I would take happiness. Fortunately this is not the case. Most of us can have low Co2 emissions and be happy at the same time.

So it makes lowering Co2 emissions pretty much a no-brainer. The only question for me is what is the fastest way to get there without upsetting the economic balance.

Here I generally like the less government and less gimmicks approach. LEED is a good example of what not to do.

Complicated
High overhead
Ineffective
Bureaucracy

Simplicity is generally the best approach.

PBS has been running a documentary on the Aircraft industry the last few weeks. During WWII all the manufactures got together and shared knowledge and supported each other to increase quality and production in a very short time. (this shows what can be done when the will is there)