Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doomed.

Revi · Fusion Joined: Apr 25, 2005 Posts: 3252 Location: Maine

Solar panels were hard to get in the past couple of years. We are getting a couple more this next year. I see them as a key thing to have. We have a small back up electric system, powered by one solar panel. It's a great way to live with solar and get to know how it works. If the grid cuts out we still have led lights to get around and can listen to the radio or play a cd.

We use it all the time. I am charging my cell phone right now.

The panels are only part of the expense. There is a charge controller, and fusebox and of course the batteries as well.
_________________
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.

mos6507

Zardoz

According to this study, Lovelock is exactly right, and there is no chance of retrieving the situation:

CO2 output must cease altogether, studies warn - Research points to years of warming even with ambitious emission cuts

roccman

Dukkha · Heavy Crude Joined: Dec 14, 2007 Posts: 103

Just today, the British government has said that it supports the building of new coal fired power stations, and this from a government that at least pretends to be concerned about climate change. The minister was interviewed this lunch and said, in essence, the economy comes first and if the economy needs fossil fuels, the economy gets fossil fuels. Lovelock's right. We're going to burn it as fast as we get our hands on it and devil take the hindmost.

oowolf

The recent temperature rise goes on top of the 0.9 degree C rise over the past 12,000 years due to agriculture and pastoralism. We doomed ourselves when we began to domesticate the environment. The planet should be several thousand years into the next ice age.

dohboi · Light Sweet Crude Joined: Dec 05, 2005 Posts: 1271

Righto, Zardo, but it's actually worse than that. James Hansen says that we need to bring CO2 equivalence back to the 300-350 mmp range, preferably on the lower end. We're at about 385 and heading north fast (2-3 ppm per year, last time I checked).

So we have to go cold turkey on ff AND start taking CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Likely???

The folks at climate equity agree, noting that in the early 80's before the Arctic Cap started its slide toward its current near-total collapse, the concentration was 320 ppm, so that should be our goal.

I'm doing what I can in my own life and trying to put pressure on my family and institutions, but people don't really want to hear about it much, even people generally sympathetic. My usually mellow, liberal, well educated father becomes uncharacteristically angry if the subject even comes up.

FourOfSwords

Eat Drink and be Merry...yup, I'm gunna be eating out of the dumpster again, drinking muddy stream water, or drinks left at fast food restaurants again...but I might just be merry, cuz I'll be unplugged from the 'machine' as much as is humanly possible these days...until I die from complications from my diabetes meds I won't be able to afford...life is tough sometimes, and Nature is impartial...but I should be as happy, happier than I've been in years.
Woo Hoo Razz

Alex

yesplease · Fission Joined: Oct 03, 2006 Posts: 2312

Ludi

FourOfSwords

TheDude

Katuhaukka · Tar Sands Joined: Dec 17, 2006 Posts: 22 Location: earth?

Katuhaukka · Tar Sands Joined: Dec 17, 2006 Posts: 22 Location: earth?

There just might be hope if ALL - or 90%- of worlds military budgets would be spent on renewables and renewable infrastructure.
That is alot of money.

I can say i hope for it and no love-lock can do nothing about it.

He likes nuclear as alternative? gimme a break.

natural catastrophes and digging that uranium.. eh?

if climate warms much, there is no way to know which place on earth would have suitable conditions for growing plants.
climate patterns will most likely get twisted and unstable in that point.

Ainan · Heavy Crude Joined: Feb 18, 2008 Posts: 257