A bit of global warming

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Kasuha
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A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Thu May 12, 2011 9:04 am

Global Warming -- The Current Status: The Science, the Scandal, the Prospects for a Treaty
I found this talk really useful and enlightening so I thought I'd share.
It left me with funny feelings as it generally confirmed everything I ever thought about AGW hysteria (I always considered myself a skeptic) ... but now I'm going to quietly pray for clouds to start forming :pray:

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chelle
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by chelle » Sun May 15, 2011 8:05 pm

His lectures are great. It was the one about waves that I referred to in my Vacuum? post.

Note, he doesn't say that carbon dioxide isn't a hazardous thing, he mainly points out that there isn't necessarily a relation to global warming. If you live in a smoggy city you'll know what I mean ... and he is also very pro clean energy.

btw regarding praying for clouds, you might want to check out this TED talk from Stewart Brand: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/stewa ... esies.html

At about 15:40 he comes up with these crazy clouds generators, anyway you should check out the whole lecture because he's a big mini nuclear plants fan.

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Kasuha
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Mon May 16, 2011 6:16 am

Those cloud generators are the second funniest idea I have ever seen related to global warming - the first being artificial trees running on electricity.

Mini nuclear plants are not even funny, they're just plain stupid. With them we won't fear radioactive pollution from ones such as Chernobyl or Fukushima anymore, we'll get used to having radioactive pollution all over the place.

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chelle
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by chelle » Mon May 16, 2011 10:21 am

Kasuha wrote:Mini nuclear plants are not even funny, they're just plain stupid. With them we won't fear radioactive pollution from ones such as Chernobyl or Fukushima anymore, we'll get used to having radioactive pollution all over the place.
Nuclear plants are a more complicated safety issue than just the pollution.

Anyone who doesn't really know the basics dangers of radioactivity should check this lecture by the same Professor Richard A. Muller:

Physics 10 - Lecture 07: Nukes

and previous ones also:

Physics 10 - Lecture 06: Radioactivity II
Physics 10 - Lecture 05: Radioactivity
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Kasuha
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Mon May 16, 2011 12:00 pm

Chelle wrote:Nuclear plants are a more complicated safety issue than just the pollution.
Sorry but I don't have time to listen to an one hour long talk now so I'll respond without that as I feel I know quite a bit about nuclear plants. I promise I'll listen to it later.

Nuclear plants are sure very complicated safety issue, but in the end it all breaks down to preventing radioactive pollution and to preventing people to stay in areas with high radioactivity, regardless whether it's intentional (active zone) or unintentional (pollution). Ways of handling pollution after it actually occurred are sure important too but they're only secondary measures when the damage has already been done.
I don't really consider other safety issues such as hot steam or heavy weights specific for nuclear plants as they are normal for such kind of production and are only dangerous to employees.

Regarding global warming, nuclear plants are the cleanest, most environment friendly and most reliable energy source we have. But that only applies to the big ones where all safety measures can be held properly.

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chelle
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by chelle » Mon May 16, 2011 12:33 pm

Kasuha wrote:
Chelle wrote:Nuclear plants are a more complicated safety issue than just the pollution.
Sorry but I don't have time to listen to an one hour long talk now so I'll respond without that as I feel I know quite a bit about nuclear plants. I promise I'll listen to it later.
He talks about how it can be a source for making nuclear weapons ... and why the US keeps an eye on Iran and North-Korea, and why it bombed Iraq in '96.
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Kasuha
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Mon May 16, 2011 3:06 pm

Chelle wrote:He talks about how it can be a source for making nuclear weapons ... and why the US keeps an eye on Iran and North-Korea, and why it bombed Iraq in '96.
That is generally one of kinds of radioactive pollution, although a kind of extreme one.
And if I make a step back I believe it's clear that keeping nuclear plants safe even in this way is much easier with big ones than with small ones.

Anyway... the original topic was global warming, not nuclear safety, so I propose to stick to the original topic instead.

josch222
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by josch222 » Tue May 17, 2011 9:52 am

I'm more on the side of the IPCC on the AGW issue for the following reasons:
I fail to see some kind of "hidden agenda", while on the other side there
is a lot of money from the fossil fuel lobby and dubious "scientists" involved.
The AGW sceptical real climate scientists are in a minority.

But I think all this doesn't matter much because sooner or later fossil fuels will
become more and more expensive and finally they will be gone.
The solution to this will mostly be the solution to the GW problem.
So it is better to address the problem now because the energy and other
resources needed to develop and build alternatives are still affordable.
We will have to do this anyway.

Nuclear power plants are not and never will be save.
It is simply impossible to predict all possible modes of failure and their combinations
of all parts and humans involved in such a complex piece of technology.
Just read some reports of the investigation of big accidents.
It doesn't matter if transportation (Eschede train accident, airliner crashes)
or chemical plants or nuclear fuel processing.
Despite all savety measures there is always a chain of (more or less) unlikely
failure and nearly always mixed with human failure or misjudgement.

If you read such reports it is often simple to say what would have prevented
this kind of accident. But at the same time you think:
It was nearly impossible to foresee this special chain of failures before, and if
someone would have predicted that the person surly would have been seen as an
objection-raiser.
In all of the above mentioned cases of "conventional" accidents the damage is
somewhat limited and societies accept the risks.
I doubt that western societies will accept the risk of loosing hundreds of km² of
land for decades and having to pay hundreds of billions in additional taxes to
cope with the outcome. Fukushima will be a lesson, at least for the more densly
populated countries in western Europe.
In Germany nuclear power isn't politically enforceable anymore,
other countries are just one core-melt behind.
And there will be more nuclear accidents, inevitably.

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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Tue May 17, 2011 5:36 pm

josch222 wrote:I fail to see some kind of "hidden agenda", while on the other side there
is a lot of money from the fossil fuel lobby and dubious "scientists" involved.
Now that's one really funny argument because I can see it exactly the other way around.
josch222 wrote:The AGW sceptical real climate scientists are in a minority.
That's just what so called alarmists are saying. Real scientists don't care whether they're skeptics or not because their data talk for them.
josch222 wrote:But I think all this doesn't matter much because sooner or later fossil fuels will
become more and more expensive and finally they will be gone.
The solution to this will mostly be the solution to the GW problem.
So it is better to address the problem now because the energy and other
resources needed to develop and build alternatives are still affordable.
We will have to do this anyway.
The reason why I am scared exactly the fact that you are most probably completely wrong about this. In fact there may be way more fossil carbon available to us than we can even imagine. You should take a look at the talk I posted to get an image of how much of it is there - and that's just what we know about!
josch222 wrote:Nuclear power plants are not and never will be save.
It is simply impossible to predict all possible modes of failure and their combinations
of all parts and humans involved in such a complex piece of technology.
Just read some reports of the investigation of big accidents.
It doesn't matter if transportation (Eschede train accident, airliner crashes)
or chemical plants or nuclear fuel processing.
Despite all savety measures there is always a chain of (more or less) unlikely
failure and nearly always mixed with human failure or misjudgement.
There is nothing completely safe. Everything you do, including breaking eggs for your breakfast carries certain amount of death risk and there are people dying more or less often to it. Nuclear power is without doubt one of safest and cleanest energy sources we have available. People die more often to windmill accidents than to nuclear accidents, and power generated by all existing winmills is just a fraction of power generated by nuclear plants.
josch222 wrote:If you read such reports it is often simple to say what would have prevented
this kind of accident. But at the same time you think:
It was nearly impossible to foresee this special chain of failures before, and if
someone would have predicted that the person surly would have been seen as an
objection-raiser.
In all of the above mentioned cases of "conventional" accidents the damage is
somewhat limited and societies accept the risks.
I doubt that western societies will accept the risk of loosing hundreds of km² of
land for decades and having to pay hundreds of billions in additional taxes to
cope with the outcome. Fukushima will be a lesson, at least for the more densly
populated countries in western Europe.
In Germany nuclear power isn't politically enforceable anymore,
other countries are just one core-melt behind.
And there will be more nuclear accidents, inevitably.
There will be more windmill accidents, with no doubt, proportionally to how many windmills will be built. There will also be more fotovoltaic plant accidents proportional to how many fotovoltaic plants are built. You can never be safe against any risk, you can only be reasonably safe and accept the remaining risk and its related deaths as part of the game.
Literally millions of people die in car accidents and nobody is calling for banning cars. That's because people accepted the risk as normal, regardless the fact that riding a car is one of most unsafe things you can ever do.

Now that we've gone through the emotional part, I ask you to listen to the talk I posted. There is a lot of useful and important information.

1/ CO2 concentrations DO raise and it is highly probably related to human activity
2/ Global temperatures DO raise. Whether it related to human activity or not is highly disputable but I could even accept that it is.
3/ CO2 concetrations WILL CONTINUE to raise and there is nothing we can do about it (see the talk for reasons)

On the other hand:

Any claims that temperature will raise dramatically are false
Any claims that sea level will raise dramatically are false
Any claims that glaciers will substantially melt are false

all of that is already scientifically proven.

IPCC did a lot of high quality scientifical work but they did also some scientifical blunders and even scientifical crimes (see the talk). Unfortunately, these were exactly the things that caught attention of media and this forged and falsified information was spread all around the world and never really recalled. That's very bad and very sad thing to happen to a scientific organization and there's no wonder any real climatologist is now looking at any IPCC results with high amount of distrust.

AGW turned to a dogma, to a kind of religion. That's also very sad fact. People believe in AGW.
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay higher taxes"
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay more for energy"
If you don't see the pattern, I think it's sad too.

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chelle
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by chelle » Wed May 18, 2011 9:36 am

Kasuha wrote:AGW turned to a dogma, to a kind of religion. That's also very sad fact. People believe in AGW.
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay higher taxes"
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay more for energy"
If you don't see the pattern, I think it's sad too.
You shouldn't be too sad, the tax payers money goes into the lhc ... so it will detect something new, that can be taxable.
One day sir, you may tax it.
Faraday's reply to William Gladstone, then British Chancellor of the Exchequer (minister of finance), when asked of the practical value of electricity (1850). link
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josch222
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by josch222 » Mon May 23, 2011 7:38 pm

Kasuha wrote:
josch222 wrote:I fail to see some kind of "hidden agenda", while on the other side there
is a lot of money from the fossil fuel lobby and dubious "scientists" involved.
Now that's one really funny argument because I can see it exactly the other way around.
Based on what?
Please explain how the IPCC is working to get more taxes out of you and how they will manage to let it flow in their pockets.
As opposed to the fossil fuel companys, they undoubtedly will multiple their profit if the stupid burning goes on.
Kasuha wrote:
josch222 wrote:The AGW sceptical real climate scientists are in a minority.
That's just what so called alarmists are saying. Real scientists don't care whether they're skeptics or not because their data talk for them.
I meant real CLIMATE scientists, the "scientists" pushing the agenda for big oil, coal and gas are -except a very few- all from other fields.
Here is an example of this kind, the guy from your linked speech:
Mr. Richard A. Muller has a Ph.D. in Physics and is retired. With the exception of some work on the ice ages he has not done much in the field of climate science.
But he is the president of a lobbying company. In this company Mr. Marlan Downey
is a member of the advisory board. He had a thirty-year career with Shell Oil and
is now Chairman of the Board of Roxanna Oil Company.
From their web site: “A Living Legend in the Oil and Gas Business”

Of course this proves nothing. It is just a bit of evidence.
But sorry, I find it utterly naive to think a bunch of hundreds international scientists has conspired to rip of the population with a fake AGW-agenda, compared to the worlds biggest industry who has billions at hand for marketing and influencing public opinion and politicians and scientists.
This industry has really something to loose, not so much the climate scientists.
Are there examples of a few-hundred-scientists-conspiracy in history?
So simply follow the money and the more likely scenario to find out who is spewing BS.

Kasuha wrote:
josch222 wrote:But I think all this doesn't matter much because sooner or later fossil fuels will
become more and more expensive and finally they will be gone.
The solution to this will mostly be the solution to the GW problem.
So it is better to address the problem now because the energy and other
resources needed to develop and build alternatives are still affordable.
We will have to do this anyway.
The reason why I am scared exactly the fact that you are most probably completely wrong about this. In fact there may be way more fossil carbon available to us than we can even imagine. You should take a look at the talk I posted to get an image of how much of it is there - and that's just what we know about!
So you are scared. Why?
Why it is a problem for you to _not_ burn all the stuff available.
I simply don't get it. Why is it a must to fire up every bit of fossil fuel?
And if I read such brilliant arguments beginning with:
"...the fact that you are most probably completely wrong..." or
"In fact there may be way more..."

So tell me, fact or possibility? How does this match with that:
Kasuha wrote: Real scientists don't care whether they're skeptics or not because their data talk for them.
Please give me the factual data on the unimaginable amounts of fossil fuel.

josch222 wrote:Nuclear power plants are not and never will be save.
It is simply impossible to predict all possible modes of failure and their combinations
of all parts and humans involved in such a complex piece of technology.
Just read some reports of the investigation of big accidents.
It doesn't matter if transportation (Eschede train accident, airliner crashes)
or chemical plants or nuclear fuel processing.
Despite all savety measures there is always a chain of (more or less) unlikely
failure and nearly always mixed with human failure or misjudgement.
Kasuha wrote: There is nothing completely safe. Everything you do, including breaking eggs for your breakfast carries certain amount of death risk and there are people dying more or less often to it. Nuclear power is without doubt one of safest and cleanest energy sources we have available. People die more often to windmill accidents than to nuclear accidents, and power generated by all existing winmills is just a fraction of power generated by nuclear plants.
My point was the acceptability and -following- the political enforceability of nucler power in a society. At least in Germany this is gone. Forever. People have been lied to too long, by politicians, companies and lobbyists. They have paid huge amount of tax money for a technology that can cause an economical and humanitarian disaster in such a densely populated country. They know they would have to pay for that with their taxes, as well as they will have to pay for the waste that has been generated.
The majority does not "believe" in nuclear power any more, if you like.
And magically suddenly all politicians are anti-nuke ;-)
At the same time the people are driving their cars at higher speed than in most countries on earth and have no problem with it.
Like it or not, call it irrational (I call it sane), that are the facts.

Re: Windmill and PV accidents.
Do you think there are no uranium or coal, gas, oil, mining, transportation, processing accidents? They will be replaced by others related to renewables.
The impact of a single accident is very limited in casualties, time and money, as opposed to a single nuke accident of the Fukushima or Tchenobyl type or some bigger accident at a nuclear processing plant. There is another big advantage: The nukes are not insured, if they where, nuclear electricity would be too expensive to meter ;-)

Kasuha wrote: Now that we've gone through the emotional part, I ask you to listen to the talk I posted. There is a lot of useful and important information.

1/ CO2 concentrations DO raise and it is highly probably related to human activity
2/ Global temperatures DO raise. Whether it related to human activity or not is highly disputable but I could even accept that it is.
3/ CO2 concetrations WILL CONTINUE to raise and there is nothing we can do about it (see the talk for reasons)

On the other hand:

Any claims that temperature will raise dramatically are false
Any claims that sea level will raise dramatically are false
Any claims that glaciers will substantially melt are false

all of that is already scientifically proven.
Bwahahahaha, ...end of emotional part..., Any claims.., substatially..., dramatically..., scientifically proven.
You are clearly joking here.
It is nice that you have such a strong opinion, but this kind of "Period!!"- rhetoric will not work very well, at least not in science.
There is no need to dramatic changes in temperature or other parameters in local climate to dramatically change agriculture or conditions of living.
Now you will come with the argument that change must not necessarily mean bad.
To counter this in advance: For agriculture EVERY change is bad in the short run because it turns whole ecosystems in a mess and it takes some time to stabilize.
Of course you may enjoy some new weather phenomenons while starving ;-)
Kasuha wrote: IPCC did a lot of high quality scientifical work but they did also some scientifical blunders and even scientifical crimes (see the talk). Unfortunately, these were exactly the things that caught attention of media and this forged and falsified information was spread all around the world and never really recalled. That's very bad and very sad thing to happen to a scientific organization and there's no wonder any real climatologist is now looking at any IPCC results with high amount of distrust.
What are you talking about?
Please show proof of forged and falsified information, I have heard from accusations (from the usual suspects) but never seen proof that there was falsified data.
And what are your "real climatologist"? List them!
Kasuha wrote: AGW turned to a dogma, to a kind of religion. That's also very sad fact. People believe in AGW.
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay higher taxes"
"in the name of AGW, we need you to pay more for energy"
If you don't see the pattern, I think it's sad too.
[/quote]

Do you know any politician or scientist who really said such?
Or do you simply believe that such a "pattern" exists?

I see only the usual teebagger "drill baby drill" faction allegations and conspiracy theories.
I really hope you are not one of them.
If they only where honest and would just say:
"I want cheap electricity, gasoline for my SUV, 24h HVAC with windows open,
because I deserve it, I'm entitled to waste it and I don't give a shit what others have as long as I had mine" Or: "Every cent of taxes is evil, better to get ripped off by big companies". Not to mention "A war a day keeps energy shortage away" (at the same time completely ignoring the taxes the military sucks away, or thinking that kicking someones innocent ass is simply priceless).
But to try to argue "scientifically" for that attitudes behind with a lot of BS-rhetoric,
I will never understand.

It's pretty simple:
Solar energy (called "renewables" but in fact all solar as well as fossil fuel) is all we have on this planet in the long term. Sooner or later we will have to cover all our demand by it.
If it is done now in big scale the transition could be done in 3-4 decades and energy would be cheaper than now. Big re-insurance companies are planning really enormous investments in related technologies now because they see the problems arising from more and more extreme weather phenomenons right now. And believe me they have the data. They are smart: If there is less business due to raising premiums they have an alternative in the energy market, at the same time they may be able to prevent the worst outcome of GW. This is real long term thinking, and only this will help to spread the costs of transition to renewables. If big energy companies and others would do the same it would not be necessary to be afraid of higher taxes. Not to mention the big economic boost that would create. There is enough money around, the problem is that it gets more and more invested in BS "finacial products" where no real creation of value is behind. You can't make money out of money on a global scale, you have to make things.

In the end you have the choice between gambling and hoping the IPCC and others are wrong. That means gambling that a LOT of things turn out true in the Future:
1. There will be enough fossil fuel and we will find it and it is cheap to get.
2. All the burning of it will have no or limited impact on the planets living conditions.
And if that shall work for a real long time:
3. Some God who secretly generates more and more deposits or fills them up ;-)

Or you can come to the conclusion that this a bit much to hope for and support a smooth transition to solar energy in all it forms (except fossil).
Since I find it obscene to gamble with humans lives I choose the latter.

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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Mon May 23, 2011 8:08 pm

josch222 wrote: ...
Wall of text
...
Insanity has to stop somewhere, I am not arguing with you because your post is too long and I hate answering such amount of questions, especially if most answers you are asking for lie just one click away in the first post of this topic - which you were supposed to listen to and understand in the first place.
Actually all of your posting demonstrates that you are so certain about your "truths" that you don't even care about listening to any other arguments. That's just another reason to stop wasting time on discussion with you.
Have fun with your conspiracy theories if you like them so much.

josch222
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by josch222 » Tue May 24, 2011 11:21 am

Kasuha wrote:
josch222 wrote: ...
Wall of text
...
Insanity has to stop somewhere, I am not arguing with you because your post is too long and I hate answering such amount of questions, especially if most answers you are asking for lie just one click away in the first post of this topic - which you were supposed to listen to and understand in the first place.
Actually all of your posting demonstrates that you are so certain about your "truths" that you don't even care about listening to any other arguments. That's just another reason to stop wasting time on discussion with you.
Have fun with your conspiracy theories if you like them so much.
That's right, insanity has to stop.
The insanity that US-politicians (Inhofe, Cuccinelli) tried to criminalize climate scientists.
(that was even criticized by AGW-skeptics, the few ones with some honor left)
The insanity that climate scientists are flooded with hate mails and murder threats.

You accused scientists of forging and falsifying data :liar: when in fact all investigations came to the conclusion that this was not the case.
So back that claim up or take it back!
But I'm sure you have simply no evidence, you are just spewing a lot of claims
solely based on one speech of a former scientist who now lobbies for big oil.
You are not able to give any substance to your claims.
And the funniest excuse I ever heard for that is: "your post is too long" :laughing-rolling:

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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by Kasuha » Tue May 24, 2011 2:44 pm

Forged and falsified data in IPCC reports are known and proven fact. People who do such things don't deserve to call themselves scientists.
Please note that I am by no means suggesting that all of information in IPCC reports was forged and falsified. The sad fact however is that those falsified parts got most popularity and many people still base their AGW fears on them.

Edit: This image I have just found feels very related...
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josch222
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Re: A bit of global warming

Post by josch222 » Wed May 25, 2011 6:29 pm

So you have nothing to offer than the same speech again. Opinions from one guy with ties to the oil industry (which I have shown you evidence for).
I tend to stay with the IPCC and their reports where 640 scientists contributed to.
As opposed to the loud crowd of non scientists who speak of a hoax or a conspiracy
who are funded by the fossil fuel industries.
And as opposed to the small group of 39 scientists who have a opposing opinion,
but hold even different opinions in their group. And of whom only about one half are even in the field of climate science.
For a broader base read this:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/ ... 7.abstract
"Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that (i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."

I (like most others on this planet) don't have the resources to do the climate research myself, one always has to rely on others on such subjects.
And in this case it is a very simple estimate of probability who may be right.
In that context I don't put my money on the few who hold a different opinion.

The vast majority of climatologists may be wrong, but if they are ignored the consequences may be catastrophic. In one case I may loose some standard of living (and I doubt even that), in the other case I and a whole lot of humans may loose much more. Given the fact that we will run out of fossil fuels sooner or later this is a no-brainer for me.

btw: Nice diagram, ever asked yourself what fits on you?

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