Penn and Teller on Carbon Credits

I downloaded the plugin and found it causes pop up ads to appear while viewing the video.
REPLY: Well if you use Firefox or IE7, it will block that. It’s free video, but there is no free lunch. Otherwise you’d have to subscribe to Showtime.

You should have warned me it is a horror show, Anthony. I dont’ think even a river rock could restore my equilibrium easily now I’ve watched it. Truly expletive delitive depressing.

Scratch my previous post. The link is changing.

Something just occurred to me concerning Gore’s enthusiasm for carbon trading schemes and CO2-free energy generation – compare this with this.
So, my question: Is Al Jr. just finishing what daddy started?

they should have done a skit about BOM today in Sydney. 5 degrees below average and it snowed but BOM said its not snow its soft hail
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24085664-29277,00.html

Correction: There have been snow in Sydney 186 years ago – which also might have been this “soft hail”.

Penn and Teller depend very heavily in this video on Patrick Moore, who is, in fact, a very reasonable, very well-informed spokesman on environmental issues, BUT neither side in this video gets into any actual data analysis–they just assert that “science says” this or that in support of their cause. Species extinction is a perfect example: Moore says at most 1% extinct in 100 years, the woman who was advocating for environmental action says 50%. From watching the video, how can one tell which number is correct?
The Rainforest Action Network should be ashamed picking “Kate” as their spokesperson. She makes it seem that all of them have no clue about the facts behind their cause, yet I personally know people involved with that group who are very well informed. I think it’s certainly true that a lot of the young people who get involved with environmental groups do so for emotional or quasi-religious reasons, but its not a valid form of reasoning to judge the truth or falsehood of a group’s position based on the motivation of the membership of the rank-and-file. It’s the same as criticizing the spokesman from the Cato Institute simply because his organization is pro-business and businesses contribute to Cato.
The real problem is people like Ross Gelbspan, who should know better…

Does the website releasing the video have permission from Penn & Teller and Showtime? Wouldn’t want to be accused of stealing you know…
As a Showtime subscriber and someone who occasionally watches the “Bullshit” series, it’s actually quite good (in a comedic sort of way). Penn & Teller like to make fun of people who for the most part deserve it.
Disclosure: I’m a Democrat and moderately liberal…. but skeptical of the whole AGW debate (it’s way to political for my taste). I’m coming to this website to observe the science debated. It’s refreshing to watch ideas discussed without the usual character assassination going on.
Oh, and btw…. where’s the damn preview button?
REPLY: Scott, thanks for dropping by. Unfortunately there is no commnet preview feature on the blogs hosted on WordPress.com. Like you I wish there was.

The greatest damage from climatism is diverting focus from the real and rapidly approaching challenge of Peak Oil with its critical need to develop alternative fuels or methods for transportation fuels.
The increase in fuel and fertilizer prices from approaching Peak Oil is already having a devastating impact on 3rd world economies and small farmers ability to support their families.
See Peak Oil Overview at The Oil Drum
The Export Land Model applied to World Oil Exports which project the need for alternative fuel resources of 6.2%/year. Contrast that with historic US oil imports RISING at 5%/year. This promises a shock of needing to replace about 11%/year for the US from business as usual.
A Quantitative Assessment of Future Net Oil Exports by the Top Five Net Oil Exporters” at GraphOilogy.blogspot.com
Peak Oil Update – December 2007: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers Khebab
The Shock Model Khebab
Matthew Simmons’ Presentations
<a href=”http://hubbertpeak.com/”HubbertPeak.com
PeakOil.net etc.

Funny things is that the cold has got almost minimal coverage in the media in Australia. Our politicians are this week fine tuning our global warming bill – dont want a little record cold to get in the way!!!
Nowra reached just 9.0 degrees – when both new and old station data are considered, this makes it the coldest day since 1963.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/illawarras-coldest-in-decades/9605
Bellambi Point, near Wollongong, struggled to 11.0 degrees, its coldest day in eleven years of records.

I DL’d this from a BT website.
Highly entertaining episode, which while containing people have been caught without facts and the time to explain them, is so telling of people’s hypocrisy. That alone is enough to not want to devote blind faith into AGW theory.
That, and proving that ‘eco-guilt’ isn’t important for me to function with goodness towards the planet. Guilt is useless if you’re unwilling to act for goodness.
AGW may seem like a way to channel people’s guilt into action, but frankly, it is NOT convincing enough for many people and me (warming due to natural or human effects) to be something that is worth fighting for.

OT
I wonder if someone will step forward and blame the following on AGW:
http://wcbstv.com/topstories/new.york.beaches.2.780980.html

P&T are profane, but hilariously so. More importantly — and perhaps this goes over the heads of their detractors and critics — they’re also correct.
David L. Hagen…
Puh-leeze. We can easily collect solar power in space and beam it to earth. We know how to do this. Even the NYT, normally the queen of luddite BS, realizes the veracity of this and posted a recent editorial in support of it. The only reason it’s not being done now is that space access isn’t cheap. Cheap access to space is about 1 or 2 decades off, tops.
What do you think the hardline socialists etc are pushing the green agenda so hard? They realize that space energy is their death knell and it’s coming fast. Peak Oil promotion is merely another way to pad the bet, to force an expensive move to chimerae like wind energy NOW and divert funds that would otherwise be used for something realistic like space power. They don’t want abundant cheap energy. They want control. Peak Oil fear is just another tool.

Pops (12:11:57): As an electrical engineer, however, I’m not so quick to buy into the “collect in space and beam to earth” bit
Neither am I. Regardless of what the energy density really is, though, I’m sure the Greens would proclaim it harmful.
randomengineer, The problem isn’t cheap access. There are really only two ways to do this efficiently: 1) Use a big focused mirror or 2) collect and beam the energy using either a laser (probably would have to be a CO2 laser) or microwave.
In both solutions, the collection system would act like a solar sail making orbit maintenance problematic. Also, in both solutions, the energy density at the Earth will have to increase by a fairly large amount if the system is to be useful. Another interesting problem is keeping the spacecraft in constant view of the sun so that it will also work at night. It’s unlikely that the craft could remain out of the Earth’s shadow. A high elliptical orbit could minimize the “dark” time but would make pointing the power beam more difficult.
Laser transmission is easier to aim and the lower divergence increases the efficiencey. I’m assuming a CO2 laser would be used (if laser transmission is the choice) for continuous power transfer. Unfortunately, CO2 lasers emit infrared. Other colors could be used by allowing the system to use power bursts instead of continuous operation. Instantaneous power density would have to increase though.

DAV,
A polar orbit with a precession equal to the earth’s orbital period would keep the satellite in the sun at all times.
The real problem though is trying to coordinate one or more satellites with stationary ground units. One way to solve this problem is to put the satellites in geosync orbit. However, the distance (23000?) miles makes the problem of targeting problematic, as well as the issue of beam spread.
Another way is to have multiple satellites and multiple ground stations. As the satellites orbit, they shift their beam from one ground station to another, as they come into range.

We’ve been running out of oil for at least 60 years. Eventually, we really will, and the alarmists will jump up and down screaming “See? See?”. We probably have run out of cheap oil. $120/bbl isn’t chump change.
Beaming energy down from space doesn’t make sense. To get only 1 GW, with a big antenna (10km x 20km), the energy density at the center is about 100x the federal standard for exposure. Assumes microwaves. Laser is worse, making light up there (10% at best) and converting it back down here, very inefficient. Requires an even bigger collector. In a Clarke orbit, with a really STRONG extension cord… (the DC resistance along 22,500 miles would kill that idea)
Others have commented on getting something that big up there and keeping it there (as did I several threads back) It didn’t make sense 30 years ago, still doesn’t. Solar power here on Earth makes a little more sense, works 8-10 hours during the day. That’s the time we need the most power, so it has a place. Wind is less predictable, may work as a supplement.
Couldn’t view P&T video, my ancient browser and security said “no”.
Having seen them many times on other mechanisms, I have no doubt the language was very blue and roll-on-the-floor funny. Ridicule may be a better response to AGW than logic. More folks can understand it.

To the AGW propogandists: I’m sorry but you’ve only yourselves to blame for not allowing un- biased/evenly funded research science to run its course!
The Greens are Going Crazy
By Alan Caruba (07/27/08)
It’s hard to ignore the fact that the Greens are going crazy, not just in the United States, but around the world. They are increasingly frantic over the opposition being voiced against global warming, one of the greatest hoaxes in modern history.
The Greens have bet everything on global warming as the reason for giving up the use of long established sources of energy such as oil, coal and natural gas. The object has been to slow everything the modern world calls progress.
In India, a spokesman for that nation of one billion people has flatly refused to accept the global warming hoax. China shows no sign of yielding to the global warming lies. The greatest agricultural and mercantile economy to have ever existed, the United States of America continues to thwart its own growth by yielding to the lies.
Recently the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said that “coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. It’s global warming. It’s ruining our country. It’s ruining our world.”
No, what makes us sick is listening to such preposterous lies. A Rasmussen telephone survey taken after Sen. Reid’s absurd statement found that 52% of voters surveyed rejected his views about coal and oil, double the amount of those who agreed.
What is troublesome, however, is that the same survey found the voters evenly divided on whether global warming exists or poses a threat. Fully 47% of those surveyed believe that human activity affects the climate. Both candidates for President are publicly committed to the global warming hoax by varying degrees.
Despite an intense, decades-long propaganda campaign, coupled with indoctrination in our nation’s schools, the truth is beginning to emerge.
In March, an international conference on climate change organized by The Heartland Institute brought together over 500 of the world’s leading climatologists, meteorologists, economists and others for three days of seminars and presentations that completely refuted the pronouncements of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and disputed the lies of Al Gore’s famed “documentary.”
As recently as July 8, the Space and Science Research Center held a news conference in which it stated that the warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850 was completely natural, i.e., had nothing to do with human or industrial activity.
More significantly, the Center went on record saying that, “After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun the next climate change.” The current warming period is not only at an end, but a distinct cooling cycle has begun and will bring “predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future.”
Just how crazed has the environmental movement become? On July 7 it was announced that Argentine scientists have been strapping plastic tanks to the backs of cows to collect and measure how much methane gas they produce.
Methane, like carbon dioxide, is a minor component of the Earth’s atmosphere. Methane is also released from swamps, landfills and other sources. If it and CO2 played a significant role in determining the world’s climate, it would be a cause for concern, but it is the Sun that primarily drives the Earth’s climate cycles. Solar activity has gone quiet in recent years as fewer and fewer sunspots, magnetic storms, have been seen.
To maintain the global warming hoax, thousands of events and natural phenomena have been blamed on it. A recent example is the floods in America’s mid-West. The National Wildlife Federation released a statement on July 1 blaming global warming.
Climate experts at The Heartland Institute were quick to respond. Dr. Joseph D’Aleo, Executive Director of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, said, “Alarmists have adopted the can’t-lose position that all extremes of weather—cold, warm, wet, or dry—are all due to global warming”, adding that, “The record snows, severe weather, and heavy rainfall have been the result of rapid cooling in the northern tier of the United States and Canada, not global warming.”
Early in July, Bret Stephens, writing in The Wall Street Journal, called global warming “a mass hysteria phenomenon”, noting that “NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world’s oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years…”
The global warming hoax has never been about the climate. It is about competing economic theories. “Socialism may have failed as an economic theory,” wrote Stephens, “but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism.”
The United States Senate refused to consider the UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change that requires massive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions based solely on the global warming hoax, but other nations did sign on. None have ever met their obligation to limit CO2 emissions, nor need they have bothered.
At the recent G8 conference an international agreement to cut CO2 emissions was given serious consideration despite the fact that the Earth is now a decade into a cooling cycle likely to last several decades or longer. The impact of this proposal on the lives of ordinary citizens will prove needlessly costly. Proposals in some nations for various taxes based on global warming are a form of fraud.
The sensible refusal by leaders in emerging economies such as China and India would make it impossible for any limitations on carbon emissions by Western nations to have any impact, even if such reductions had anything to do with the realities of the Earth’s climate.
The only thing that can be predicted with certainty is that the Greens will become increasingly unhinged and crazed by the failure of the global warming hoax.

“Gore’s enthusiasm for carbon trading”
Another site noted some of it may be because he buys “credits” for things like increasing power use at his home[s] from – yes – a company he owns.

Here is great classification of people:
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=232401
My conclusion from this article: activist = stupid active person

Mike,
Yes, the IFR “is” less effort. There was a prototype running at Argonne-West. When it was canceled, the shutdown costs were approximately equal to the cost to complete the project, meaning the shutdown was not financially motivated. I am personally acquainted with a high-ranking member of the IFR team who told me there were some pretty strong undercurrents associated with the cancelation, as in “keep your mouth shut about IFR if you want to continue your career.” I’m not going beyond that, as anything else I might add would be speculation.
The IFR was the logical next step in reactor development with many advantages beyond reactors currently in use. The reactor core was incapable of melt-down because it employed a metallic fuel rod whose thermal expansion shut off the reaction, thus preventing thermal runaway. The facility was a sealed facility, meaning no transport of materials to or from the facility for the life of the plant. There was never any separation of plutonium from the hot fuel mix, as the on-site reprocessing used electro-refining to formulate new fuel rods from the old.
And, of course, it had the benefit of using “spent” fuel rods for fuel, converting high-level nuclear waste to low-level nuclear waste. Instead of spending billions of dollars to figure out how to store spent fuel rods, we could have shipped them to IFR plants to meet our (USA) electrical needs for hundreds of years.
The bottom line is that any viable alternative to fossil fuels will be demonized by the enviros. Green IS the new red.

For those wondering about Al Gore, I beleive he holds a very large percentage share of a Carbon trading Company. When he buys credits, he’s buying them from himself. Keep that in mind.

@MarkW (13:35:24) :
I’ve been saying geosynch but I really am thinking geostationary — they aren’t the same thing. The latter only work in equatorial orbits.
The problem is not so much to keep the satellite in sunlight but to do so and remain visible to the ground. Only an equatorial (well, near-equatorial) orbit can accomplish this. The basic problem is that there aren’t many orbits (I’m hedging here — I believe there are none) that would allow a satellite to remain in sunlight and also be visible from the Earth’s night side. The moon is visible all night but it, too, sometimes enters the Earth’s umbra. Note that the moon isn’t visible 24/7 anyway so lunar orbit won’t work either. Multiple spacecraft perhaps would.
Multiple ground stations and a sun-synch orbit might be the only real answer. Until there’s a global power grid, a solar power spacecraft would only be usable about 12 hours per day (on the average) at any given station.

Who the f**k wrote the f**cking script for that show? F**king Al Pacino?

Evan Jones
“I think the Peak Oil flap is the same basic error the Club of Rome made back in the ’70s and ’80s, recycled.” – You apparently are not familiar with the foundational geophysics or economics and logistics of transitioning to other resources with high capital costs.
Peak Oil = Resource Half Consumed (typically 55% consumed at peak). Yes 45% will still be discovered. BUT the price rises till you have “demand destruction” OR provide alternative fuels in sufficient supply to meet transport desires.
The challenge is the dynamics of the transition the transition. Welcome to the fuel transition roller coaster!
And pray that you don’t crash.

Evan Jones ( 21:21:46 )
Before we get too excited about Peak Oil, there’s some interesting thinking in that arena which, if true, would make concerns about natural resource exhaustion (at least for oil) a bit silly. Check out this article:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/3952
As well, check out a more in-depth look at the resurrected theory of the abiotic origins of oil at:
http://www.gasresources.net/index.htm
Now if (and that’s a mighty big if) this idea holds water, then oil will never run out as it’s being continuously created. Just some fascinating thinking for the geology community.

bullshit=awsome show that “calls” the best BS in the world today. Damn hippies – the world has been warming since the ice age.

Dude,
I agree with your stance on global warming, but that Penn & Teller video link tries to install Zango on your machine. Zango is spyware. Telling people it’s safe is not cool.
REPLY: Hmmm, I didn’t notice any such thing when I connected, and my spyware scan comes up clean
REPLY 2: from charles the moderator–Anthony, I just checked and this requirement has been added, so IT Guy may be correct, but the need to install Zango was not there last week when you originally made this posting.
REPLY 3: Thanks for the heads up, I’ve removed the link to VREEL and added links to YouTube, which has the video now. When it first was released, only VREEL had it, and yes VREEL has started installing spyware. I’ll never use them again for any purpose – idiots. – Anthony

Ok, Pen and Teller and bending the facts a lot here, shame, they should be better informed. Here is a link to a serious website that will crush anyones ignorance about the facts of global warming, which is absolutely real: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php