[Paddlewise] A last turn on Global Warning

As a humanist, with technology interests (For a while
I was a text/fact-checker for an aeronautical magazine -
I was in heaven), I know how easy it is to write fuzzily, 
so that readers misunderstand what you mean, and that
is true for scientific text, as well as any other kind
of text, including judicial.

Then we have our 'mental filters' on, which try to deduce
the meaning of a text, which in itself might be a
story in fourth iteration, or worse. Much magazine text
is very far from the original facts, and our filters
can be very effective. 

An example of a good book:

An excellent book, when it comes to truthfulness, is
'Practical Junk Rig', as the authors, Hasler & McLeod,
write clearly what is based on their own experience, and
what is not, or just observed by others. If only all were!

Global Warning is a subject non of us have experienced
(as it takes so long time for radical, irrefutable changes
for anyone of us to experience then personally - man's
other activities (like deforestation) affects it so much).

History tells us that the climate has changed back and 
forth over time - the Medivial being unusually warm, and
the Potato Famine years, unusually cold and wet, 
caused hundreds of thousands of Europeans to move 
to the US.

What is certain is that the coral reefs around Sweden's
coastline has dwindled to a mere remnant, since two
hundred years back, when man started to pour lots of
CO2 into the atmosphere (then due to the 'coal and 
steam revolution').

The Earth's path around the Sun is not simple, and the
Sun itself increases and decreases in strength cyclically,
thus we can't really be certain which came first, the chicken 
or the egg!

When I grew up it was said that to build a nuclear power 
station you used up more energy than the power plant would ever
produce (making the materials, including millions of tons 
of concrete, and the strip-mining for the uranium, transports
and manufacture of all the steel for the pipes, and so on).

One wonders if it was true, or not (a parable to the
Humwee/Prius discussion), but it is certain that nuclear 
powerplants - if everything is electrically powered, 
moves the CO2 exhausts from the cities elsewhere.

Same is true with the Humwee and the Prius: If all cars
were Priuses, the air in the cities would be much better,
no matter what the final energy bill is.

If we go for all-electric vehicles we'd need many times more
nuclear power stations! With it many more security personell,
and many more dangerous transports, and millions of tons more
of radioactive waste we don't know what to do with!

My own take on this is to use as energy-efficient vehicles
we can afford, but I see no future for an all-electric
vehicle park. Instead try to build as light and safe
vehicles as possible, as the lighter, the less resources
a vehicle uses (less tires, less oil, less road-wear, 
et cetera).

Kayaks are pretty efficient, even if many of them are
transported across the world, before reaching their
customer - same is true for four-stroke mopeds, bikes,
and sailboats! Many motorbikes are as wasteful as
medium-size cars, while taking half the useful load
of a small car!

Heavy transports on land should all be electric train-based,
or using rivers and channels (should be possible with
electric channel boats, with overhead powerlines, like
a tram?!).

Does anyone know how much energy (including the energy in the
crude used) is needed to make one liter of gasoline - I
bet it is a lot!

Tord

And the nuclear power stations should be built where the consumers
are (human or industrial), not in far-away places, where
only those totally innocent, will be in harms way!



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