Oh my, that’s just painfully stupid.  And no, you aren’t nitpicking.  The main advantage of turning natural gas into a liquid fuel is that it gets used to do work formerly done by other liquid fuels… instead of burned into the air (wasted) at an oil well.

At the risk of sounding as ignorant as a politician:

I don’t get it. Natural gas isn’t any more renewable than liquid fossil fuel right? So whats the difference/advantage of using one over the other? I mean from an environmental standpoint?

From an environmental standpoint there’s a few advantages. While it still puts CO2 into the air it’s less than some other fossil fuels. It produces less carbon dioxide per unit of energy released. In that respect it’s “cleaner” than coal or oil, but not truly clean like solar power is. According to it’s Wikipedia entry:

[B]urning natural gas produces about 30% less carbon dioxide than burning petroleum and about 45% less than burning coal.

The other advantage is that there is a lot of natural gas out there at the moment. This makes it useful as a means of transitioning off other dirtier fossil fuels as we try to develop truly clean technologies.

And as I mentioned before, vast amounts of natural gas are currently being wasted through flaring at oil wells (where it still produces co2.  A process that can liquify the stuff on a small scale (say, at a well head) means the fuel can be used instead of wasted.

Ok that makes sense. Unfortunately I have a bad habbit of tending to think in absolute black/white terms.

Natural gas is an easy conversion for most standard internal combustion engines.  Not saying it is cheap, or without problems, but we have been running many dual-fuel vehicles, such as forklifts that run inside buildings, for many years.  The reason for them is that their exhaust is cleaner.
  Natural gas infrastructure is well established, we just need more “gas station” outlets.  Converting cars and trucks to use natural gas will make a big dent, AND A QUICK DENT, in our burning of oil. 
  I would like to suggest everyone pay attention to the Pickens Plan, which is running TV ads now.  This man knows what he is talking about.

For those of you who are certain that Anthropogenic Global warming is a thouroughly proven, incontrovertible fact I suggest the following web site:

http://www.climate-skeptic.com/2007/09/table-of-conten.html?gclid=CLWd8LmXypECFSosagodsxs83w

(This is not some right-wing wacko “God Hates Fags” kind of nutcase site. It is VERY detailed and supported with references.)

(This is not some right-wing wacko “God Hates Fags” kind of nutcase site. It is VERY detailed and supported with references.)

OMFG!  It has references an’ everything!  I guess the jig is up.

Hey, if you liked that site, maybe you’ll like this one.

“Goes to credibility, your honor.“

I’m not convinced it’s a “proven fact”, but I think there’s enough evidence behind it to take it seriously.

Decrepitoldfool:

That’s as much as Al Gore has.

There’s something about the whole “Repent! The End Is NEAR!“ hysterical tenor of the global warming enthusiasts’ cries of alarm that has a fishy smell to it.

That’s all Al Gore has.

Didn’t watch the video, did you Jay?  I’ve read that website, and a passel of others like it.  They’re a study in obfuscation.  But whyyyy would someone do that, I wonder? 

There’s something about the whole “Repent! The End Is NEAR!” hysterical tenor of the global warming enthusiasts’ cries of alarm that has a fishy smell to it.

Sure, that’s the way to evaluate scientific evidence.  Just go with your gut, I always say.  and speaking of fish...

Mankind isn’t the only species on Earth, we just act like it.  Don’t worry, the world won’t end.  But we can sure make it a lot less habitable.

Maybe if global warming wore a turban and prayed toward Mecca five times a day, conservatives would take it more seriously.

“Mankind isn’t the only species on Earth, we just act like it.  Don’t worry, the world won’t end.  But we can sure make it a lot less habitable.“

Typical global warming enthusiast; your concern for the environment is just a fig leaf for your hatred of humans.

How did you get “hatred of humans” from anything DoF said?

Typical global warming enthusiast; your concern for the environment is just a fig leaf for your hatred of humans.

Humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which we sit.  When population soars past 8bn, topsoil gone, coastal cities flooded, fisheries depleted, tropical zoonotic diseases in the temperate zones, and oil production tanks, you get mass starvation and probably war.  We are on track for these things to happen, unless we apply a bit of long-term thinking.

Paul Revere was an ‘alarmist’.  Did he hate the colonies?  Please tell me you are not actually that stupid.

I’ve known DOF for quite awhile and the last words I’d use to describe him is “human hater.“ Truth of the matter is DOF and myself are probably old enough that we won’t live to see the worst of what’s to come. There’s even a chance our kids won’t live to see the worst of it.

So if we really hated humans we wouldn’t give a shit if the planet were going to hell in a hand basket. The simple truth is: We, as a species, are part of an ecosystem upon which we are reliant and if we do enough damage to that ecosystem we could bring about our own premature extinction.

In all seriousness, I don’t think enough people are going to realize the shit storm that’s brewing before it’s too late to do much about it. We don’t respond well to a slow approaching crisis. Give us something immediate, earthquake, wild fire, hurricane, etc. and we’re all over that bitch, but if it takes awhile to get here we’ll just sit around and argue about it for awhile until it’s too late to do shit about it.

Or, worse, some of us make it a point to do more damage because we think the threat isn’t real.

For me, I have a feeling that the truth is somewhere between the doomsayers and the deniers. My only concern is that by the time it becomes a “proven fact” it will be too late to do anything about it. I’m old enough to see the positive changes we made in air/water quality and hope that we continue the good work we have done so far, not stop because it is “good enough”. I also think ushering in a new era of “green” might also be a good way to create jobs to meet the new challenge. We tooled up for the space race, now we can tool up for the green race.

How many times has the weatherman been wrong about his prediction for the next day? And we are relying on the same weatherman’s prediction for weather 20 or 50 years from now? WTF? Yes, we need to pay attention to our environment. We are, all of us, part of that environment. However, Chicken Little was not using adequate data for his predicition. I suspect we are not using adequate data for Al Gore’s prediction.

How many times has the weatherman been wrong…

That’s a common canard of the confusion between weather and climate.  Weather is what happens on a given day in a turbulent system.  Climate is the aggregation of all the weather.  Climate is a trend, and shows up in things that move over longer time periods, like ice coverage, oceanic pH, and ocean surface temperatures.

And for the umpteenth time, it is not Al Gore’s prediction.  Nor that of the ‘same weatherman’.  Your friendly TV weatherman is not a climatologist and does not have supercomputers, satellites, or global sensor networks.  He does not do isotopic analysis of ancient ice cores and tree rings.  He does not pore through the exacting records of English gardeners during the start of the Industrial Revolution. 

Chicken Little is a children’s story.

Weathermen are surprisingly accurate- the British Metreological office does use a supercomputer.  What they can not predict is change in wind speed/direction, so the promised weather does happen, not just always where and when predicted- it gets there late/early.

Sorry, didn’t mean to diss weathermen, and national weather services use sophisticated methods. Pity the poor local TV personality though - he has the toughest job of all.  No matter how good the national predictions, he’s going to be wrong about the weather this afternoon in a particular village for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

In some ways a climatologist has an “easier” job, like predicting the average of 500 dice tosses instead of trying to predict the next one.

Lh writes…

What they can not predict is change in wind speed/direction, so the promised weather does happen, not just always where and when predicted- it gets there late/early.

This is actually something I’ve noticed over the years as I’ve gotten older. More often than not the weatherman is correct on

what

will happen, but off on when it’ll happen. The further into the future something (e.g. rain) is supposed to happen the more likely it’ll be off by a day or two.

Also there is interesting (well if you’re a geek like me) research into why the weather is worse at the weekend- (Saturdays get more than 1/7 of the rain).  It is believed, and there is serious research going on into this, the drop in motor traffic (ie commuters), affects the weather. 

The Neo-Cons will no doubt work this into their Green strategy- to stop it happening we can all work 7 days a week.

DOF:

Your friendly TV weatherman is not a climatologist and does not have supercomputers, satellites, or global sensor networks.  He does not do isotopic analysis of ancient ice cores and tree rings.  He does not pore through the exacting records of English gardeners during the start of the Industrial Revolution.

OK, research into PRE-INDUSTRIAL history to show the climate has changed often in the past, so the current input of HUMAN INDUSTRIES must be producing the current change in the weather? Again, WTF?

Chicken Little is a children’s story.

You’re saying human input to make the climate change is NOT a children’s story?

You’re saying human input to make the climate change is NOT a children’s story?

Yep.  Investigation into pre-industrial climate changes has coughed up a few different things that can change climate.  One of them is atmospheric carbon dioxide, whatever the source. Now if we dig gigatonnes of carbon out of the ground and burn it, we change the composition of the atmosphere.  We then become agents of climate change; it took a hell of a long time for that carbon to be sequestered in the ground in the first place. 

Climate change over very long periods is no big deal, ecosystems adapt.  Over very short periods, very bad, because ecosystems die.  The resulting upheaval makes life difficult for species that depend on those ecosystems.  Us, for example.