crs1026
Superstar
Climate change is what happens to the earth's atmosphere when you chop down all the trees in the forest, to make paper, so you can print new Canadian High Speed Rail studies.
- Paul
- Paul
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VIA Rail
- Thread starter ehlow
- Start date
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
I'm a professional that has to design with this shit in mind. I can safely say I've done my research.
mdrejhon
Senior Member
Ignoring sensationalism on both extremes (the conspiracy), human-accelerated climate influences are still very real.
Climate has always been changing even before humans.
But humans have been affecting the natural climate in vast number of ways, some minor, some major. This is a complex system but the last couple centuries has resulted in accelerated climate changes far beyond what would have naturally happened. One good example is sea level rises that are becoming above-and-beyond what would have naturally happened without humans. And even if some spots gets colder, many more spots get hotter, to a combined average temperature raise when measuring the entire Earth surface by satellite. Yet because of one cold snap, people disbelieve human influence to climate change. Forest for the trees. Sigh.
There's definitely far enough evidence of serious stuff to worry about, even if it's not "We have to abandon our planet" apocalyptic, nor "It's all fake news" dismissable stuff.
The way the disbelievers are so mind-numbed by the distortions/arguments to the point of totally disbelieving the existence of any human influence to the climate (regardless of what terminology is used), is a worrisome influence on our generation.
Climate has always been changing even before humans.
But humans have been affecting the natural climate in vast number of ways, some minor, some major. This is a complex system but the last couple centuries has resulted in accelerated climate changes far beyond what would have naturally happened. One good example is sea level rises that are becoming above-and-beyond what would have naturally happened without humans. And even if some spots gets colder, many more spots get hotter, to a combined average temperature raise when measuring the entire Earth surface by satellite. Yet because of one cold snap, people disbelieve human influence to climate change. Forest for the trees. Sigh.
There's definitely far enough evidence of serious stuff to worry about, even if it's not "We have to abandon our planet" apocalyptic, nor "It's all fake news" dismissable stuff.
The way the disbelievers are so mind-numbed by the distortions/arguments to the point of totally disbelieving the existence of any human influence to the climate (regardless of what terminology is used), is a worrisome influence on our generation.
tmlittle
Active Member
The worst part, in my opinion, is the way major projects like this tend to be sequential. HFR will be used as an excuse that "something is being done about Via Rail" while ignoring other routes, the other part of the Corridor, etc. Meanwhile very likely little or no progress on bringing intercity rail back to Calgary (or the Edmonton-Calgary corridor proposal, which admittedly would be more likely to fall under the provincial government anyway). The rural services that Via would surely love to jettison will meanwhile keep on operating ancient Budd cars rather than any plan to get newer DMUs that might actually promise a future for these routes. The Ocean, which is one of the only ways of travelling between the Maritimes and the rest of Canada, will continue to operate on awful track and with aging vehicles. Then if/when HFR is finally done people will pat themselves on the back for belatedly investing a few billion into the most important intercity route in Canada, money that should have been invested years and years ago so that today we'd be talking about HSR instead of HFR. HFR is important, but it's also pretty sad that they had to take what should have been gradual improvements to the Corridor's infrastructure over decades and roll it together into a branded plan, hire consultants for it, and then go begging to the Infrastructure Bank to get the money.
raptor
Senior Member
If you've done your research, then you surely know that we've been keeping track of weather on this planet for only the last 150 years or so. When we say "climate change", the "change" part is in relation to last year? last decade? last 100 years? it's all peanuts relatively speaking. Our last ice age was over 11,000 years ago, so a century is really just a blink of an eye.
Second, you must realize that the earth is not standing still in the Milky Way, let alone the universe. Having said that, as the Earth rotates around the Sun, it's not in the exact same spot every single year. Since it's in a different spot, the external factors (such as radiation) are always different, hence affecting our climate.
I can go on and on...
Design with this shit in mind doesn't mean you've done your research. Or perhaps you have done it but cannot listen to arguments opposing yours
innsertnamehere
Superstar
These kinds of comments can be so easily and resoundingly denied and have been so many times that this comment borders on trolling.
Streety McCarface
Senior Member
I'm not having this argument here because it's completely off topic and clearly I won't be able to reason with you. That being said, some of the stuff you said is blatantly misleading or outright false, so I will refute those and ignore any arguments you may bring up.
We have other ways of measuring temperatures over long periods of time other than weather data. Ice cores, biodiversity levels, glacier sizes, among so many other things have given us ranges of temperature levels in the past, whether they be a few centuries ago, or a few million years ago. You wanna know how we were able to tell that the last ice age was 11K years ago? Through research that has supported climate change. If you haven't noticed, science isn't necessarily based on exact values, and if you took a high school science class, you'd know there's an error associated with every measurement you take. Science accounts for these errors using statistical analysis and estimation, otherwise, it's not science.
The only radiation effects that are significant to Earth come from the sun and the nuclear decay in our core. Radiation is a wave and a particle, it has energy, yes, but it doesn't imply heat. It has to transfer that energy from EM spectra to heat, usually by absorption. A lot is not absorbed, rather, reflected (if it wasn't you wouldn't be able to see anything). Nevertheless, the amount of radiation emitted by the sun is in a state of flux, and the phenomena that cause this are called sunspots. I have read numerous papers hypothesizing that sunspot activity may have an impact on the Earth's climate cycles. The problem with this theory is that sunspot activity is periodic, and it's regularly periodic (every 11 years). While no one knows exactly why sunspots occur, the point is that since it's a regular, periodic change, meaning the average radiation levels will still be constant, and, should have repeated effect on our climate that are seen every 11 or so years if there is any impact at all.
But back to thermodynamics, when that EM radiation is absorbed by the biosphere, it emits heat. According to the second law of thermodynamics, energy will ALWAYS tend to a state of disorder, meaning that heat will convect itself as far away from the earth as possible (since it is the hottest object in our area). Theoretically, regardless of whatever levels of radiation are absorbed by the earth and release heat, a state of equilibrium will ALWAYS be reached, where heat diffuses away from the earth at a constant rate. We are not seeing that now, we are seeing more and more heat being retained by the Earth. Chemically (and quantumly) speaking, the molecular spacing of greenhouse gases allow higher frequency UV and visible light EM radiation to pass through them. Heat is infrared radiation. With it being much longer, it is absorbed by these greenhouse gas molecules (which include compounds like water, methane, carbon dioxide, among others that have a dipole and can change their dipole moment), warming the Earth.
Earth is little more than a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe, meaning it doesn't receive much (if any) noticeable action. If you genuinely think the stars are having a significant effect on earth's temperatures, you're sorely mistaken. Stars are lightyears away (meaning light takes years to get here, all the while it has to deal with absorption from other objects, bending from large-gravity, and divergence. Once they get here years (sometimes centuries later), they barely give off enough light to be seen in a lot of areas. A First/Last Quarter moon gives off more light than all the stars in the sky, even without light pollution.
One thing to note, the reason the Earth's large, isolated temperatures fluctuations (the seasons) is because of the tilt of the earth, not its location about the sun.
One final thing to note, I said and I quote: "The change in climate parameters (ie mainly temperatures), largely attributed to the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere." I never mentioned human emissions or defined Climate Change as a result of human interactions. Why you may ask? Because that is a naïve assumption. The climate is complicated and there are certainly an infinite number of factors affecting climate change, whether they be volcanism, sunspots (potentially), human interaction, natural disasters (ie forest fires/arctic methane release), or even some of the things you mentioned. That doesn't give anyone the right to write off the issue or attribute it to pseudoscience.
I would not dare assume I haven't done my research on this subject.
Back to VIA, the presence of the video can only do so much good. Some public surveying I've done (not at all scientific) has shown that no one really knows what HFR is. Many simply attribute it to the HSR plan the liberals toughted 3 years ago. I can only hope more sorts of videos like these are released.
kEiThZ
Superstar
Forget climate change for a second. The best arguments for investing in rail along major corridors could be made simply on economic development grounds. That to be is a stronger argument than attempting to play to Canadians' strange hypocrisy on climate change.
felix123
Active Member
Quiet, quiet, you're all morons. Back to VIA now, please.
kEiThZ
Superstar
I'm curious. What was the reason that VIA released that HFR video? Are they going to run it on TV? Because other than that, lobbying the public seems strange.
tmlittle
Active Member
It might be web ads. I agree that it's a bit strange -- you could argue it's kind of pre-emptive advertising for the service (I get a ton of Via ads online so I have a good sense of what they're like), but are people really going to remember an HFR ad from 2019 when they're travelling in, say, 2025? This only makes sense as a lobbying campaign to get public support, but aside from in Eastern Ontario (where general support seems to be high), I don't think there will be much opportunity for the general public to have input on this. The final decision probably won't even be made under the current government, based on the usual lifespan of minority governments. Perhaps they're hoping it will be an election issue, assuming it isn't already in progress by the next election?
littlewill1166
Active Member
Interesting how it no longer says that the reservation system will be replaced next year, hope it isn't delayed.
p_xavier
Active Member
I like how they don't even answer properly. Turnable seats are standard in Asia...
littlewill1166
Active Member
The old HEP1/2 and LRC seats were turnable too. I guess, they just don't want to bother turning them...
cplchanb
Senior Member
Via just being lazy with their answers and trying to skirt the NO answer. Honestly though, why doesnt NA ever consider flippable/rotatable seats for their trains? It makes the experience so much better than having to travel hours facing backwards and it doesnt lock the seat layout. I dont think theres any safety issue to it as they do it on high speed trains with no issue. Its probably a labour /union thing