Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour"
Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour" is a feature length documentary concerning the environmental crises caused by human actions and their impact on the planet. The 11th Hour documents the cumulative impact of these actions upon the planet's life systems and calls for restorative action through a reshaping of human activity. Opens Los Angeles and New York on August 17th.
http://www.11thhourfilm.com
http://www.11thhouraction.com
http://www.leonardodicaprio.org
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So what do we do?
Personally, if global warming is real and all the big storms wipe out most of the population, that's okay with me - this planet needs an enema anyway. There's just too much BS.
On the other hand, I wake up now with my eyes burning all day, I can't drink the tap water out anywhere in this state, I can't go hiking out in Mother Nature because all the forest land is closed because of fire danger, it was another blistering 108°F today, and as I cough up another (who knows what) I'm reminded that I also can no longer breathe.
Am I concerned about the planet getting warmer? No, not really; I'll just move further north (I hear Montana is nice). But, doing all the things that are suppose to prevent global warming (excluding AltFuels) will clean this dumpster of a planet up to where I don't have to worry about my health if I go outside. I'm tired of living in other people's filth and scum. And I don't care what reply Gman will have, but China needs to straighten their shiznit, too - they've already killed one of my cats with their quality standards. Comminust or not, if their people will take a stand, the rest of the world will listen.
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I want to respond to a blatantly mixed up and misinformed post about global warming:
I will take on a few topics since it is symbolic of the unreflected and spottily informed nature of the denial-clientel which makes such posts.
...GW is a democratic scam....
It is not and it should not be politicized. The scientific evidence as (too carefully) evaluated and, under the pressure of U.S. and China, edited for their goddarn convenience, is overwhelming.
It's still a fact, get over it.
Political is only the party that denies GW as it will cut into their business. Why do something about it when GW helps melt this nasty Arctic Ice Cap that's in the way of about 20 % more oil which was previously thought as being untappable?
That's who you wanna stand for??
....Yes, man is so powerful that he can effect the entire weather patterns...
Hell yes, we have been at it in cumulative fashion for a good 100 years now.
Take a mental trip with Burt Rutan and look at Earth from space. In its atmospheric condition and balance, it can be destabilized. As we have.
We have output a manyfold amount of Greenhouse Gases into our world, more than the volcanic eruptions of millenia, to help create this scenario.
...the Dems target the young and ignorant...
Why does being Republican HAVE to stand for ignorance, denial and readiness for violence and war?
I would hope they would re-evaluate their value systems (and start reading non-propaganda literature. Oh, sorry that's too hard because you might have to put down your remote control...
....The evidence that GW is real is very WEAK....
What have you been reading?? USA today??
Or any other pro-Bush paper??
Wind power, kills birds.....
Yeah, coal plants of course are squeaky clean. I feel for the 30.000 children in the U.S. that breathe -in 1 week--- 100 x the amount of carcinogens which an average adult should not exceed during a whole year!
...Solar power, too expensive....
That's I guess why some European states who are definitely not richer than we are, take the lead and come up on 20 renewable energy already WHILE the oil business is still sitting in the easy chair and continues to fool this nation's passive, oh so passive majority...
We can reduce our footprint by 90 % with existing technology. Will it be one-size-fits all?
Of course not, but in order to find out what needs to be done, you might have put down that remote control again....
....Wave Power, difficult to deploy....
Ever stood next to an oil refinery? You know when the last update was made to that technology??
It took decades to deploy and takes ridiculous amounts of money to maintain on a daily basis.
I know that the resource it runs on is economically finished. That's all I care about. Time for the new, kick out the old. Bye Bye.
.....Taking land away from food to make fuel to move people....
WOW Now there we got something I actually agree with in this post. All that biodiesel stuff is a bad idea as it will destroy the planets "lungs". Trees in the equatorial and south american regions are most important for our complex planetary balance of CO 2 absorption and metamorphosis.
.....key a Hum Vee.....
Hey how about setting an electric Vespa on fire - maybe you would like to douse it with Gasoline...hey whatever polarizing thing you can say, post or actually pull off, go do it. I think that you don't have to break the law in order to suggest a change in course, sensibly and actively and efficiently.
...CHINA, its a fact, look it up, they surpassed us this year.....
Stop looking at other nations and then saying: "Oh look they're doin' it too..."
What does a judge say to you when you're caught speeding and you explain that everyone else was going too fast too?
Is that gonna fix anything? Of course not! However if you create and support an industry that produces something everybody needs (Solar panels, Ultra Capacitors, Wind and Tidal Gens etc.) and these nations smell money, they will follow. Remember, China is the biggest copycat on the planet! They sell a friggin 1.5 million electric scooters per year! How many in the u.S.? 150?
VERY ADVANCED!
...ELECTRIC VEHICLES - They look to be on the horizon, where will you charge them.....
With my solar panels, of course.
And if need be, at night, when Power is cheap. We could replace all US cars with electric ones without having to add any capacity to the existing grid. Heard that one before?
....In the 1970's or so, Asimov wrote...
Hey that space cannon will take another 50 years to develop - but man, doesn't it sound cool, a LASER CANNON floatin' around in space, controlled by Republicans...ya know...you don't need to be a liberal to feel queasy with that thought.
Wonder why some people want to ignore existing, functional technology for the sake of some movie plot sci-fi toy?? Oh yeah, too much TV I guess...
....Money, there is no money in it for anyone....green tech and no money?
There are a few chapters of "Plan B2.0" by Lester Brown that would make you think differently.
It is actually the very base of the new economy, if we ever get it and collectively start getting to work!
Only other thing I agree with in this particular post is the situation in China. Gotta watch out for these guys. They are ready and willing to run us out of business...or maybe make us even more dependent on their stuff and run our country by means of our wallets.
usatracy you are good at doing research, but apparently here you are adopting a lot of opinions of others.
Ok, so lets follow your reasoning. GW is a scam. Ok so why is the average temperature rising, and the polar caps melting? Lets look at some real data. Take this article on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming Read some of the references.
Read some of this: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf
Eleven of the last twelve years (1995 -2006) rank among the 12 warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature9 (since 1850).
The planet has survived large asteroid impacts and other catastrophic global events which also resulted in mass extinctions.
The evidence that GW is real is very WEAK, or THIN as they say in Lethal Weapon.
Really? I guess some people will literally have to see the polar caps gone, and the sea level rise to flood most coastal cities before they get it. Its not a matter of opinion its data that has been collected and studied for over 100 yrs. Of course it is much easier to cling to opinions especially convenient ones than strain yourself to study what the data is telling us.
I agree with some of what you are saying though. I think ethonal production is for the most part not much of an alternative. And it is using food that could be used for other purposes namely to eat. And the process is not very efficient.
Just keep this in mind before you flame me back, IF GW is so real, so dangerous, so "WE MUST ACT NOW" and go out and key a Hum Vee, then why are China and other "developing" countries excluded from the accords and allowed to wreak havoc on the planet?
I thought the US is not involved in the international climate effort group or something, though I don't remember the details.
Do you know what country has the biggest carbon emissions, what country is doing more to damage the atmosphere and contribute to the GW problem than any other country ?
CHINA, its a fact, look it up, they surpassed us this year and are expected to grow more than 10% every year for the next 30 years, now think about those numbers, CHINA alone, because they are a "developing country" and exempt from the accords, will produce more carbon in the air in the next 20 years than has been produced since 1900 by ALL countries.
Look at energy used per capita here.
In 2003: US: 7794.8 China: 1138.3 Thats over 6.8 times the energy use per capita in the US. Add to that the fact that they use energy to produce all of the stuff we use here and I'm sure you can see that they use much less energy there per person.
Whats really going to suck, you know where China's filthy air lands ? Not on China, it goes straight to the Western US forests for filtering. Dont beleive it, go to NASA's site and look up CHINA FOREST FIRE PLUME SATELLITE IMAGE. You can see the direct route huge forest fires in China take directly to the US and then land. They are taken up, enter the upper atmosphere, then cool and land right on us. So if you can't figure out the haze in LA and across the US when we all go electric, you'll remember as you pass Walmart. And China aint big on Catalytic Converters on cars and stack scrubbers in factories (they're a poor third world developing country for pete's sakes) so they will REALLY be pumping it out like an unfiltered camel cigarette.
The "haze" in large cities is caused by smog most of the time. I can see it happening where I live (albuquerque, NM). As the city is continuing to grow there is more and more smog which is mostly caused by the ICE. Check out this detalied breakdown of smog here.
ELECTRIC VEHICLES - They look to be on the horizon, where will you charge them? The most dense areas of the US, the east coast, are not equipped to start charging vehicles, we are under threat in Virginia right now with rolling blackouts due to unplanned population increases and a power grid that has not kept pace.
There seems to be somewhat of a misunderstanding how much electricity EVs use. How many hours does your XM-2000 take to charge? If it is 80% efficient and outputs 75v max at 5a (thats 2.5 vpc) than thats a max of 469 watts max. How long does it take to charge? Well roughly guess 5 hrs at max rate for a quick calculation and say you charge it 5 times per week that much than thats 11719 whrs/week. Sounds like a lot huh! Wait, lets try and figure out how much your average american TV or computer uses. My computer uses probably about 300 watts during use and less while sitting unused. I might use it 5 hrs a day at 300 watts so thats 1500 watts and let it sit for a 3 hrs at 150 watts so thats a total of 1950 whrs * 7 days = 13650 whrs/week. What? You can power a scooter for less than a computer? How about your TV. From this article:
In the average home, a television set is turned on for more than a third of the day ? eight hours,
And a TV uses what? 90-150 watts. We'll figure 90 to be conservative. 90 * 8 * 7 = 5040 whrs/week. So you can power your scooter for about twice the energy your TV uses? Interesting huh. How about your electric hot water heater.
Mine uses 4500 watts and runs about 1-2 hrs for a shower. Les say 1.5 hrs. Thats over 47 kwhrs/week! If I just cut my shower time by 25% I'd account for about the electrical energy a scooter needs.
So start throwing some all electric vehicles in the mix and it will be an interesting situation. Especially with the advent of battery systems like 123systems where you plug in and zap all that power back into your car in minutes
You can't charge that fast. By minutes we'll assume 5 minutes than even your scooter would require: 2345 whrs/.08333 hrs = 28140 watts. This is far more than you can deliver even over a 240v outlet. And regardless of that you are going to have to spend thousands on a behemoth charger that can provide that. I don't even want to consider safety issues. Lets say your pack has a cooling system that fails or your batteries go into thermal runaway. Your not talking battery damage, your talking explosions in a matter of minutes. And lithium batteries tend to be combustable. Ok so your BMS can protect from that right? It can probably, but it can also fail. Not the best answer huh. You'd need many safety systems all upping the overall system cost and all to cut the charge time down for what? You can reasonably safely get a 1.3 hr charge at 1800 watts that an existing charger can provide reasonably safely and for only about twice the power of a microwave. If you could charge anyplace in your city where you take your scooter than this is probably fast enough. How long to spend at places you go. Might just be long enough to charge the batteries completely, especially considering they will not be 100% DOD every time, more like 50% or less on avg.
In the 1970's or so, Asimov wrote that when the US debt reached 1 trillion dollars, we would have enough economic strength to build a huge solar array in space (where it is most efficient) over the poles and convert that energy into a laser type source that is beamed directly to ground stations for inclusion in the power grid.
So with all this talk of GW and go green, why isn't anybody demanding R&D and orbital deployment of at least beta test versions of this technology ? It was feasible enough in the 70's to move forward on.
Now you really got to be kidding. I don't even want to bother with the calculations but if I must, I've heard something like $10,000 per pound to put something in space.
Solar pane here 100w output weight: 23 lbs. So lets say they make them super light for space and cut down the weight to just 1 lb. And lets say they manage to get 100% of the rated power out all of the time. The avg US electrical energy usage is 600,000,000,000 watts or 600 gigawatts, so you'll need 6 billion pannels at $10,000 just to put it up there thats 60 trillion dollars and we haven't even considered the cost of the panels, construction up in space, the laser, and how to harness the energy from a laser beam. I'm guessing the best way would be to convert it into heat and use that to heat water to run a steam turbine.
But don't get me wrong Asimov is one of my favorite authors!
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Avatar taken from http://www.electricmotorbike.org/
My KZ750 Project: here
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Looks like a great movie!! I have to say I am impressed that Leonardo DiCaprio has the guts to stick up for what is right!!!