Re: Simple questions

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 00:57:35 -0400, K. Jones wrote:

"Bill Ward" <bward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

<snip>

What it will transition to, I don't know for sure. I suspect it will be
nuclear, CTL, and/or marine biofuels, but there are smarter people than
me who will make a lot of money picking the winner(s). I don't share
your faith in "strong global leaders" - I'd rather have good old greed
working for me anytime.

CTL? Sorry, don't recognise the acronym? What is CTL?

Coal To Liquid. Basically hydrogenating coal to get oil. It's said to be
competitive with $30/barrel oil, so some initial plants are apparently
coming on line. South Africa SASOL has built a few, I believe. We may
see a lot more if they turn out to be profitable, and the enviros don't
get in the way.

On another subject, here's a couple links you may be interested in:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/modelE.html

is the manual for the current NASA climate model, and

http://www.climateprediction.net/science/cl-intro.php#gnh_eff

is a pretty good intro to basic climate physics.

They kind of give an insight into the mindset of the actual modelers, as
opposed to the mindless squawking parrots and cheerleaders. I think many,
if not most, of the modelers are sincere, they just need to remember that
the map is not the territory.

It looks like fun, because you can apparently make the models do just
about whatever you want them to. I can see where folks could get carried
away. SimEarth on steroids. Pick an estimated history, fiddle with the
model parameters until it sort of matches, then predict the future course
of climate. The results can't be checked for at least 50 years. What fun!

There are some active discussions going on over in alt.global-warming
that could use another level head, if you're interested.


Bill






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