Actually that may be the only problem. What happens when there is a huge increase in the number of older/retired/Alzheimers patients in your country? Who will pay for their medical expenses? Regardless of whether it happens to you it's going to affect your wallet, if not your country and your lifestyle.

I having a great of frustration with the whole global warming alarm because I have yet to see what portion/estimate is man made and how much is occurring naturally. We should (and could only possibly) deal with the man made portion. The rest we simply have to live with. I am reminded that Greenland is named that because it was once green.

I believe CD8UK reports a maximum of 175 watts during folding. This is the sole reason I will wait for the 45 nm quad processors before investing in one.

Way to go: "An Inconvenient Truth", a "film" by Al Gore. While stressing some things too much maybe I think that's generally a good thing to see to get an idea of how we do in the last 50 or 100 years and how that is causing global warming.

For my CD player to power down I actually would need to unplug the mains lead...as it keeps the DACs warm when off so the sound quality is good when you use it. I paid for sound quality from it and want to hear it....not wait an hour first. Also, the powersurge shocks of constantly switching mains on and off stresses components and causes premature failures of equipment....with the throwaway culture we have with electronics the extra costs of new equipment that needs to be made and delivered needs to be factored into the carbon footprint calculations.

Ever considered the ratio of lightbulbs that blow when switched on vs the number that just blow whilst already on? is probably 100:1

Resistance material conducts more when cold, causing power surges at switch-on.

"Instant on" CRTs means the heater in the tube is always on.

I should point out, before I say anything else, that I work in the renewable energy industry (and wind energy in particular) and should therefore not be considered objective as far as this issue is concerned. But then again, maybe someone might find my viewpoint interesting. I'll throw it out there anyway.

Firstly, I hate the term "global warming". It has never been a good description of the problem and scientists have been trying to retire it for decades in favour of something more accurate. Climatic instability usually does not appear to affect the world evenly: some places warm up, some cool down, some get drier, some get wetter and so on. Further, in the past it has often tended to lead to dramatic swings: in general, things might get hotter for a while, then suddenly swing into an ice age or vice versa. Relatively sudden reversals and bounces in climate are not that unusual. Personally, I don't like the term "climate change" either. Climates are continually in a state of change, this is not an unusual occurrence. A fairer term would describe the level of instability or acceleration in climatic change, but I haven't found any phrase that would be both accurate and snappy thus far...

Parts of Gore's film were ok, but I'm a scientist at heart and therefore sensationalism makes me uncomfortable. Overall, I didn't like it. I understand that you have to spin an idea and gloss it up to sell it to the masses even if it has merit to begin with, but I still felt a certain cheapening and oversimplification of the science was going on that made me grimace at points.

Part of the climate change we're seeing currently is nothing to do with us. It is "very likely" that "most" is driven by things we're doing, and in a much more complicated mix of causes and effects than just that relating to carbon. This is the concensus of a free scientific community. As one specialist rather militantly put it, "Since IPCC IV, there is no such thing as a climate skeptic, only a climate denier."
In any case, the data I've looked at myself were enough to convince me that we have something to worry about, and I have no reason not to trust their origins.

Climate change happens, naturally or otherwise. Sometimes it is dramatic. Some periods are stable, some are unstable. Most periods of erratic climate that we know of ended in an ice age. We're currently due (some think overdue) another ice age. We know with a confidence close to certainty that we can affect the climate through the things we do, even if we're arguing about the extent to which we're currently doing so. And we're not going to enjoy it when things get interesting again.

Given the above, I feel at the minute like we're kicking a sleeping bear whilst arguing amongst ourselves about how hard we have to kick to wake it up. I think we need to stop kicking as soon as possible, because it's looking like we might find out the answer.

Surely I like your more scientific approach than just some oversimplified statements, but your post also makes it look like an ice age would come around in somewhat like 10 or 30 years (like suddenly). That's not the case, not at all, an ice age is calculated in million years. But the recent changes that are mainly caused by humans and industrialisation took place in somewhat like 100 years from now - and that is really a sudden change taht cannot be explained by even major natural changes that evolve over some millenia and more! Rapid cahnges that are not expected to stop anytime soon, which is what Al Gore's film shows very impressively.

Rather a different attitude from what man has typically taken.
Do we let natural flooding happen on the Nile or the Mississippi?
Do we let natural Smallpox infections occur?
...

Like it or not, monkeying with natural systems could almost be a definition of civilization.
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them."
-A. N. Whitehead

To what extend we can even deal with climatic change/instability/whatever one calls it remains to be seen.
A bit premature to worry that we might reduce our effects too far.



Nicely put.

The analysis you give is incorrect in that it assumes that electricity from hydroelectric is in some way better than that from fossil fuel. Even if we assume that hydro has less impact initially, using it is no more environmentally friendly than using that generated from burning fossil fuels. Demand is so great that all of the hydroelectricity will be used, and a lot more fossil fuel electricity too. So your using up that hydroelectricity means it isn't available elsewhere, so more fossil fuels are burned. Therefore, until demand for electricity drops to the point that it could all be supplied by hydro (e.g.) you have to assume that all electricity is of the nastiest sort. (Assuming that the generators will use the nastiest last.)

So, unless you use electric heat, you should have a guilty conscience all year round.

And if you do use electric heating, you should have an even more guilty conscience. Burning one energy unit of fuel to get ~0.3 units of electrical energy and convert that again to heat is not a good idea. I.e. you have to use 3 times as much fuel as if you had just burnt your fuel directly.

But won't the power station have better thermal efficiency than a small, maybe badly-maintained, natural gas-fired domestic boiler?

Well let me give you an example of how things don't work with the contractors in the US free economy in my area.

1. A contractor buys what he believes will be a suitable location for a whole mess of apartments, condos, or townhouses.

2. They will of course be built as cheaply as possible, so:
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A. Electric baseboard requires no plumbers and little investment in equipment.
B. The utility company has gas lines nearby but not actually on the property. The utility charges $8/foot to run a main pipe passed the property, say along the new streets, but the actually line to the house is no charge. Still, why would the contractor pay for all that if he's not living there?
C. Off course electric hot water is part of it all, so showers costs like a 10 cents a minute.
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3. The units are sold and the buyers inherit the contruction decisions.

4. The massive increase in electrical usage leaves the utility company much closer to it's peak capacity, and has to buy more electricity or use more fossil fuels to keep up with demand.

5. If the contractor wasn't going to go with gas he certainly won't spend time and money on oil. Hell no chimney, which today is just a steel pipe surround by plywood and vinyl siding scraps. Still too much cost!

All this comes as no surprise to an occupation pre-occupied by short term costs and the hell with the long term effects of the country. That's why contractors would rather bribe a city inspector a few hundred bucks than to insulate the house according to code.

This is what some people think is a free market, but the price of this freedom is very high, useless, and unnecessary. And that's why despite all the whining of government intervention government at some levels remains necessary.

Here's another example of how a "free" economy fails to work in the US. A condo complex goes up in a trendy town in NJ. It's gorgeous, has many little shops built in, a center park, and ferry service a half a block away. The condos go for big bucks. They have views of the NY skyline.

The condo's are all electric. Who knows if any other fuel was even considered. I saw a condo some distance from there, it has it's own gas furnace and gas water heater in a small utility closet, but this place is all electric. Now picture this; each unit basically has just one outside wall. The inside wall is towards the hallway and each sidewall has another, presumable heated unit, next to it. Of course the end units are the exception, but the increase in outside wall surface is not all that great, as the condo's are all long rectangles. Owners there report that while they are away, with zero hot water costs, and thermostats set to 55 degrees, electrical usage runs between $300 and $400 a month, with living costs more like $550 to $600 a month. Unofficially a handful of potential buyers asked me about them since I worked in the area. I told those people to run for their lives. And this doesn't include whatever maintenace fee the place was charging. The electric rates are from 4 years ago.

Now what kind of construction company would build this electrical parasite? Here are some clues.

1. The condos were sold by the square foot of living space, but the measurements were taken of the rough walls, ie the measurements include the space inside the walls, which is not the space you live in.

2. The town taxed these condo's according to the square footage reported by the contractor. God forbid they should actually measure the place on their own and get a correct number.

3. Some tentants, probably the ones who started shelling out money for new floors or carpets, discovered that their condos are not as big as they had been told. So now they are suing the contractor.

4. Once that's completed they will turn around and rightfully sue the town, who probably won't return any of the money they were not entitled to, without a legal crowbar.

Welcome to the US free economy.