That's quite awesome. Really like the variety of shapes the burning gas takes, particularly the bumpy upside-down pie platter thing about 1/2 way through the video (shows as a thumbnail for me as well).

1) somewhere exists a group of scientists who know the precise temperature the earth is supposed to be.


Well, no. Precision isn't the issue, accuracy is. When building a climate model we don't need a precise answer for temperature at a location, we need accurate (though perhaps fairly imprecise) temperatures for many locations over time. This may seem pedantic, but you've wandered into discussing science so you might as well learn the terms.

Do you really think there would ever come a day when the alarmists concede they were wrong, especially after establishing a world climatocracy of near-absolute power?


Sorry, you're talking about some dystopian future ruled by environmentalists? Are you worried about this coming to be? Do you look around at the world and shudder at the enormous power environmentalists are getting? I mean, for whatever you think of climate change theory, surely you have to agree that the climate change movement has been pretty much completely ineffectual at getting anything significant changed or regulated. Near-absolute power, even imagining the passing of quite a bit of time and the world getting disastrously more environmentally conscious, is a bit of a stretch.

Look, I disagree with the "stereotypical environmentalist" on a lot of things - and I think many environmental programs and restrictions and whatever are pointless (recycling, random painful acts of conservation, etc..). But whether or not you like environmentalists or think they'd do a good job running things doesn't effect whether the proposition in question is true.

Me? I think the balance of evidence is currently on the side of global warming becoming a problem in the next 100 years. I think the evidence is strong enough to prompt further research and certain kinds of actions. And I don't mean cutting automotive emissions by 20%. That is really pointless. Cars burning gas is a turd that we need to flush completely and soon (burning oil at the current rate has enough problems, global warming or not) - not slowly polish.

In general, I think that good approaches to fighting global warming (mostly new energy sources) are net wins whether or not they're related to global warming. Nobody is going to regret stimulating the economy by spending on research, technology development, and manufacturing. And if it turns out global warming was happening for some other reason (or not happening at all) we'll be happy to have our Mr. Fusion powered air conditioners and holodecks.

>> ^rottenseed:
I like the fact that no matter how advanced our energy technology gets, the end of the process always takes the basic form of heating water into steam...


Hah yeah me too. Though that's the nature of the universe, so we probably shouldn't find it that funny. Everything results in heat. That's why we're here right now, with the big burning gas heater in the sky above us keeping us all moving around. You get heat with most things even if it's just as a side effect or 'wasted' energy. So i suppose it's no big surprise that, as most forms of energy dissipate as heat, if you want to generate energy from something else, you have to go via heat.

I wonder how they got rid of the smell in the offices. These moped engines burn gas and oil, that makes one heck of a smell...

CrushBug, Ant is right - burning 2000 gallons of propane is not environmentally friendly. However, it does look awesome.
BTW - that explosion was only 1000 gallons - the other propane tank raptured and only sprayed a jet of burning gas instead of exploding...

BM is not about helping the environment. It's about self expression...