WASHINGTON – Human-caused global warming is here – visible in the air, water and melting ice – and is destined to get much worse in the future, an authoritative global scientific report will warn next week.
The first phase of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is being released in Paris next week. This segment, written by more than 600 scientists and reviewed by another 600 experts and edited by bureaucrats from 154 countries, includes “a significantly expanded discussion of observation on the climate,” said co-chair Susan Solomon, a senior scientist for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She and other scientists held a telephone briefing on the report Monday.
Solomon and others wouldn’t go into specifics about what the report says. They said the 12-page summary for policymakers will be edited in secret, word by word, by government officials for several days next week and released to the public Feb. 2. The rest of that first report will come out months later.
Global warming is “happening now, it’s very obvious,” said Jerry Mahlman, a former director of NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab. “When you look at the temperature of the Earth, it’s pretty much a no-brainer.”
The world’s global average temperature has increased about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2005. The two warmest years on record for the world were 2005 and 1998. Last year was the hottest year on record for the United States.
The panel said the world’s average temperature would increase somewhere between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sea level would rise between 4 and 35 inches by the year 2100.
It is very difficult to for me to respond to your comment without appearing defensive or sounding like a sales pitch but I’ll give it a shot.
One point to consider is that the surf industry has seen very few companies introduce an MDI based foam giving the industry a narrow view of what is possible with MDI. For instance, it is possible to manufacture MDI based foams with closed cell ratios equal to those found in TDI foam, it is just that you haven’t seen them yet in a surf blank.
The MDI market really took off in the mid 90’s and there have been numerous advancements in the years since. In fact, outside of surfing, TDI is rarely used to produce rigid closed-cell polyurethane foam and is mostly used in the manufacture of flexile foams whereas MDI is the most common isocyante used to produce closed-cell rigid foams.
In his last year in operation Clark Foam produced close to 3 Mlbs (million pounds) of polyurethane while the worldwide market produced over 18,000 Mlbs total (both TDI and MDI). Of that 18,000 Mlbs the majority was made with MDI. These statistics give some feel for the fact that the surf industry accounted for an incredibly small percentage of the polyurethane produced. There is a lot of room for innovations and techniques developed in these other markets to migrate it’s way to surfing in the coming years. With the increased competition and the drive for enhanced performance since the closure of Clark expect to see many of these innovations to start showing up.
Although you have been unhappy with the MDI blanks there is much potential for an MDI based surfblank. As suppliers become more skilled in working with these formulations and processes you may very well find yourself looking at an MDI foam that does not have the problems you have previously encountered.
At least on a couple of those issues, it is possible to produce an MDI blank that addresses them. I’ve watched the progression of the Holfoam (Eurosima Innovation Prize 2006) blanks through their development here in France, and while their early attemps were yellowish, quite heavy, soaked resin and had lots of lovely little air pockets to fill, their latest blanks are white, extremely small-celled, but still a bit on the havy side. They make for extremely crisp shaping, almost begging you to do a channelled board (though I’m not a big channel fan, and my glasser hates them).
Not to say that everyone’s foam is quality, nor that the MDI blanks solve all the problems out there, but it is possible to produce a quality MDI blank.
I don’t know what companies any of you guys work for, so I hope you can take this as the honest take it is and not some kind of marketing ploy…
A couple months ago I shaped a Surfblanks MDI blank. Big buggah, 10’3" to net a 10’2". The foam was very crisp & hard - I borrowed a friend’s grit barrel planer and it worked beautifully. Needed some pressure with the waffle block to clean it up. But the results were great, the board is light & strong, and the foam was definitely uniform density.
On Sunday I cut down a US Blanks (the TDI / ex-Clark employees) 10’8" to a 10’4", making a round pin. As advertised, it felt a lot like a Clark. Including the soft spots & pukas. And then as I thinned the tail, I found a void next to the stringer which had filled with the stringer glue making a bronze colored spot the size of a marble. So the 10’4" round pin had to become a 10’2" squash. Sure, it shapes easy & fast and only needs the slightest touch with a block and then with a screen & some carpet pad…
Maybe its because for the last 2 years I’ve worked just about exclusively with 2# EPS which is crisp, light, hard, and uniformly dense. And I glue up my own stringers etc. But I had a hell of a better time with the MDI foam than with the TDI. I didn’t really want to buy it, but the guys at FGH said it was so good. And I figured I owed it to myself to try it at least once. And I realize that one blank isn’t entirely representative of a whole line… But when I’m only making around 10 boards a year, and only a couple of those are urethane, and each of those urethane blanks is going to cost me over $100… I don’t feel like risking it again. MDI for me, and at this point, specifically Surfblanks foam.
Reverb…you may be right. I checked the surfblanksamerica.com site and found no mention of either chemical…
All I know is, it felty very different - in a good way to me - from either Clark or USB - with no weight penalty. Based on that observation & what characteristics of MDI I’d read, I may have made an assumption.
Either way, that’s where I’m putting my money in the future
I’m pretty sure they’re TDI. I’ve worked on a whole lot of Teccels last year (probably around 500 to 600). Teccels uses the same Midget Farelly/Surfbanks chemical formulation for their PU. I’m pretty sure Fernado from Teccel had mentioned that it was TDI. Anyway I think its the best PU foam available these days. Though shapers say they’re more work to sand, the foams uniform tight cell sturcture and hardness makes for strong light glass jobs. and they’re a real joy to airbrush.
