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Volume of ethanol per area of farmland: 410 gallons per acre
Area required to replace gasoline use: 520 million acres, or 2.1 million km^2
Total land area of United States: 9,161,000 km^2
Fraction of land required to meet gasoline energy needs: 23%

That fraction declines with other, more efficient stocks, but there are sometimes other expenses involved depending on the particular crop. Corn is the most widely-known and -used input, but sugarcane and sugarbeets are also possible. Switchgrass can reportedly yield as much as 1200 gallons per acre (though the energy efficiency is debated) and would thus significantly reduce the area required, but 8% of the country is still almost the size of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas combined.

You make several simplifications and assumptions. First of all, the only long running research into ethanol has been done by agri-business involved in the corn industry. Other sources of ethanol are only now beginning to be developed. It is very reasonable to expect that some of the sources will be crops that can grow on land that isn't well suited to growing foodstuffs. Second, that 19% is the amount of land actually under active cultivation, not the amount that could be brought under cultivation. It took me a while to run that down, but look at page 3 of this pdf http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_pro files/agr_cou_840.pdf. Third, you assume that the same land - even the same crop - can't generate both foodstuff and fuel. Think about using cornstalks as a driver for fuel. Fourth, you make the assumption that the yield will remain constant. In only the last few years the yield from corn has gone from 400 g/acre to over 500 g/acre. Some people expect that the yield will rise to 2000 g/acre in the next 20 years. Last, you make the assumption that the inputs will only be crops. Non-agricultural inputs can also be applied. For instance, suburban lawn clippings and leaves.

The question isn't about density, as it is about resources and the ecological footprint that Americans have. We're terribly, awfully wasteful. If we all became more conscious about resource use, in twenty years, even with 360 million people, we could use less resources then than we use today.

THe funny thing is that you actually believe that.

Sheesh, where do you get your beliefs? On the contrary, rich countries have roughly ten times higher CO2 emission per capita than developing countries. And the US is indeed among the world's worst polluters per capita.

And it uses less energy per capita than Luxembourg, Iceland, and Candada. Why don't you pick on them for a little while?

And it uses less energy per capita than Luxembourg, Iceland, and Candada. Why don't you pick on them for a little while?

And it uses less energy per capita than Luxembourg, Iceland, and Candada. Why don't you pick on them for a little while?

The United States uses 23.6% of the world's energy to to produce 28.4% of the world's gross domestic product---it seems that the U.S. is actually rather efficient. (My source for these is the CIA's World Fact Book and a rather large PDF from BP).

It ranks 17th in per capita oil consumption. And it uses less energy per capita than Luxembourg, Iceland, and Candada. Why don't you pick on them for a little while?

"Except for the fact that water vapor is SEVEN TIMES the green house gas that CO2 is."

I had thought that water vapor variance was accounted for, to one degree or another, in climate models, and the theory was to ignore that, because we can't control it. As I understood it, current warming is calculated to be about 33 C, (keeping earth from snowball status) and of that only 2-3 degrees has a non-water cause. That's the bit we can potentially have an impact on.

IANAC, I just read a bit. I could well be wrong.

But it seems to me that the 'heat island' effect in large cities would be much more noticeable (I'd guess many orders of magnitude) before waste heat could be a possible cause. Our cities and generated power aren't large (unless you're like me, and prefer rural life).

Let's see, Earth is 30% land. As of 2000, 39% [1] of that had been converted to agriculture and urban or built-up areas. Ag lands are warmer than forests, but all that ag land didn't come from forests. Let's be conservative, and throw it in there, anyway. That gives us 12% of Earth's area as ag, urban, or built up. AT least one city (Salt Lake City, UT, USA) just to Google up a random example, contributes as much as 4 degrees at night, and 3.6 during the afternoon[2]. Call it 4. I'm sure cities vary enormously. But I don't think that raising the temperature of 12% of the earth's surface by a few degrees (certainly under 10) is the root cause of the warming we've seen.

In addition, waste heat has been thought of before. There's a discussion on Wikipedia [3] that's pretty interesting, as it discusses whether or not heat islands corrupted data. It also refers to and summarizes "Assessment of Urban Versus Rural In Situ Surface Temperatures in the Contiguous United States: No Difference Found"; J climate; Peterson; 2003.

I dug out an abstract for this paper:
All analyses of the impact of urban heat islands (UHIs) on in situ temperature observations suffer from inhomogeneities or biases in the data. These inhomogeneities make urban heat island analyses difficult and can lead to erroneous conclusions. To remove the biases caused by differences in elevation, latitude, time of observation, instrumentation, and nonstandard siting, a variety of adjustments were applied to the data. The resultant data were the most thoroughly homogenized and the homogeneity adjustments were the most rigorously evaluated and thoroughly documented of any large-scale UHI analysis to date. Using satellite night-lightsderived urban/rural metadata, urban and rural temperatures from 289 stations in 40 clusters were compared using data from 1989 to 1991. Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures. It is postulated that this is due to micro- and local-scale impacts dominating over the mesoscale urban heat island. Industrial sections of towns may well be significantly warmer than rural sites, but urban meteorological observations are more likely to be made within park cool islands than industrial regions.

1 http://earthtrends.wri.org/features/view_feature.p hp?theme=8&fid=34
2 http://www.epa.gov/heatisland/pilot/salt_lake.html
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island

Oh, and global warming is generally accepted as scientific fact by most real scientists worldwide - but you will always find a (US) kooky charlatan to say otherwise.

You may like to stick your head in the sand, but don't whine when others use your stupidity as an opportunity to kick you in the arse. Yes, you are at fault, by a large %age.

Very high literacy rates and low infant mortality at USA level, among other tidbits : Population, Health and Human Well-being : COUNTRY PROFILE - Cuba

Misinterpretation of statistics. GDP per capita in India is $3,100 but what is the standard deviation? Here's a badly formatted PDF with more detailed numbers. You can see that roughly 30 million households have an income of $5000 or more. If they all bought pc's it would more than double the penetration in India.

Not to mention that PC penetration here did not occur last week, when computers were 1/20th of income. Penetration in the U.S. happened more than 10 years ago, when PC's were $3-4k and GDP was ~$25k.

According to http://earthtrends.wri.org/pdf_library/country_pro files/Coa_cou_036.pdf Australia's coastline is 66,530 km long. Beats your puny 4,000 mile border by a whole lot.

Not everything is bigger in the USA.

Actually, rural farm computing can have a significant impact as long as it comes with effective communications.

one (This map was created based on U.S. Department of Energy data).

two quick summary of this link (sorry about formatting):

THE TOP 20 CARBON DIOXIDE EMITTERS
Country Total emissions (1000 tons of C) Per capita emissions Total emission (rank) Growth (in %, 1990-96)
United States 1446777 5.37 (1) (9.9)
Peoples Rep. of China 917997 0.76 (18) 40.0
Russia Federation 431090 2.91 (6) -19.2 (since 1992)
Japan 318686 2.54 (9) 9.1
...

three. Is that enough? This stuff is available from many many sources, try google.

Please, do at least some minimal amount of research before you embarrass yourself.

1. Qatar 42.96 per 1000 people
2. United Arab Emirates 29.10 per 1000 people
3. Kuwait 26.80 per 1000 people
4. Bahrain 20.65 per 1000 people
5. United States 19.84 per 1000 people
6. Luxembourg 18.54 per 1000 people
7. Australia 16.84 per 1000 people
8. Trinidad and Tobago 16.38 per 1000 people
9. Canada 16.18 per 1000 people
10.Singapore 13.26 per 1000 people
...
79.China 2.69 per 1000 people
.India 0.96 per 1000 people

Does this need any more explanation?

Clearly, since the industrial revolution, CO2 levels have risen (and almost at an exponential rate). If our carbon sinks weren't maxed out, we would probably be seeing a naerly linear increase. Oh and by the way you forgot an italic tag ender thingy.

Ok, how about these: here, here and here.
All three give different numbers but state that EVs have less overall pollution. Two of the articles state that EVs in California would be particulary helpful because California has cleaner power generation.

Amen to the banning of phones in lots of places but surely just because there is an _incredibly_ _slight_ chance of something bad happening is no reason to legislate against something or we'd all end up never doing anything at all. Does the chance of getting run down when crossing the street stop you from doing so? I can guarantee more people are injured/killed crossing the street than in mobile phone related gas station explosions but its not illegal to cross. How about flying? Lots of people fly (they say that statistically its the safest form of transport) and some die in horrible air crashes each year - again more than those who die in mobile phone/gas station disasters but lots of us still do it.

Most "accidents" can be prevented by a nanny state through the judicious use of legislation - hey, lets ban everything that has even a slight chance of being dangerous - but I thank god (figuratively at least) that I don't live in one, at least not yet!

Just how statistically probable does something need to be in order for you to want it banned? Lets look at the probability of a mobile phone/gas station disaster... I'll take your figure of 100 accidents and say that you mean per year (you didn't specify) - this seems a little high but we'll take this figure to start. Next, we'll estimate how many people in the world own or drive both cars and mobile phones - This article suggests that worldwide, the number of cars in use are somewhere between 580 (1990) and 816 (2010 est.) million - lets be conservative and say it has not increased at all since 1990. Finally we need to know how frequently they are refuelled. Lets estimate that, on average, a car uses one tank of gas per fortnight (lets in fact round down to two tanks per month). That makes 24 visits to the gas station per vehicle per month.

Now we'll estimate the number of car owner/drivers who also own mobile phones. A quick google leads to this article which in turn references several other sources. It would appear that both Europe and North America (the majority car owning nations) are reaching the stage where everyone who wants a mobile phone has one - lets call this around 70% of both car owners and mobile phone owners. so:

(580 million car/owners x 70%) x 24 fill-ups = 9.7 BILLION visits to the gas station annually.

So if there are 100 incidents, the probability is 1 in 97,000,000. Lets put that in perspective - the chance of winning the Canadian lottery is 1 in 13,983,816 and the chance of dying in a plane crash is 1 in 11,000,000 and the chance of dying in a car accident is (from the same source) 1 in 5,000.

So, statistically, its far safer to talk on your mobile phone whilst filling up than it was to drive to the gas station in the first place - by a huge margin!

Maybe we don't need to ban mobile phones at forecourts, maybe we need to ban cars :)

To the people who are linking global warming to this film, nice fucking meme work. If you are not a believer in global warming, you are devious and clever, I salute you. If you do belive in global warming, you just made an own goal. Well done, idiot! Now we are going to see lots of people who belive that by disproving this sci-fi movie, they are disproving global warming.

With regards to Lomborg: In my opinion, he is a fraud and a self promoting piece of shit.

Some relevant links for those who are too lazy to Google:
Debunking Pseudo-Scholarship: Things a journalist should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist

UCS examines The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg

A great quote from one of the articles, "Nine things journalists should know about the Sceptical Environmentalist":

In assessing the validity of Lomborg's work, journalists should proceed with caution. Here are some points to keep in mind:

1. Pseudo-scholarship.

The Skeptical Environmentalist contains nearly 3,000 footnotes, implying careful research.

In fact these footnotes reveal numerous instances of highly selective quotation and often inaccurate sourcing that distort, directly contradict the original author or otherwise fail to provide support for Lomborg's claims.[3]
2. Confusing the issue.

The subtitle to Lomborg's book is "Measuring the Real State of the World," a lead-in to the author's premise that the state of the world is improving, not deteriorating as environmentalists claim.

In support, Lomborg presents evidence that humans are living longer and healthier lives, with rising levels of income and growing amounts of leisure time worldwide, and he dismisses evidence of global environmental degradation.

But the environmental issue facing society is not whether we are increasing our material wellbeing -- we are -- but whether we are prospering in ways that damage the natural environment.

Lomborg's book equates -- and confuses -- these two fundamentally different issues.
3. Statistical fallacies.

Lomborg furthers this confusion by mistaking association for causation, an unlikely error in a statistician.

Throughout the book, he attributes environmental improvements to increases in standard of living rather than to improved scientific understanding research or to firm environmental policy.

It was scientific research on ozone depletion that led to phasing out CFCs, stricter air pollution regulations that improved air quality in industrial countries, and the introduction of SO2 emissions trading that reduced the causes of acid rain in the United States.

Good science and political will, as well as wealth, led to these environmental improvements.

But Professor Lomborg asserts that, in heavily polluted developing countries, rising incomes will automatically lead to similar environmental improvements, and he implies that additional research or environmental policy efforts are therefore not needed.
4. The oceans.

Lomborg claims that "marine productivity has almost doubled since 1970"[4] -- a surprising statement given the well-documented declines of many commercial fish stocks.

What Lomborg actually means appears later in the book as a figure depicting an increase in total fish catch, plus production from fish farms.[5] Capture of wild fish from the sea has increased by 20 percent, not 100 percent since 1970.

And what humans are taking from the oceans and what the oceans are producing are of course fundamentally different matters.

Lomborg's equating of the two exemplifies how his book is fundamentally misleading.

By focusing on total production, Lomborg's graph conceals that stocks of cod, haddock, hake, flounder, swordfish, sardines, halibut, Atlantic Ocean perch, and many others have crashed.
5. The forests.

Lo

America ranks last among all developed western nations in the amount of aid it provides foreign nations expressed as a percentage of its gross domestic product (GDP) about 0.08 percent, according to a recent report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/jul98/23_13_097.html

U.S. foreign aid in 1997 -- at less than one-tenth of one percent of gross domestic product -- has not only reached its lowest level ever, but is also the lowest in relation to GDP of any developed nation

Ok! Great idea.

We'll abolish taxes, the military and we'll all live happily ever after, having nothing forced upon us.

Dolts! This is the greatest country in the world hands down. That's why more people want to move here than any other place in the world. Why is this country great? Well sure, freedom is the number one reason. A close second is infrastructure. Do you know how nice it is to have indoor plumbing, paved roads to drive on, being able to drive at night without getting car jacked (for most of the country), electricity on 24 hours a day. I know what it's like to live in a country without those things. You think our governement officials are corrupt? You have no idea. A senator in my home country just demolished a $4 million mansion to rebuild a brand new more luxurious one in its place, while half the country starves.

Freedom and infrastructure!

To keep them require two things: a military and taxes.

I hate having to pay taxes but I know we need them. I don't want to die at the hand or bullet of a foriegn enemy serving in the military, but I know we need it also. If we needed to reinstate conscription in order to maintain the military (which is absurd BTW) then that's what we need to do.

Americans take their security, freedom and everyday conveniences for granted and it's freaking ridiculous. For the most part the loudest complainers would shrivel and die in a corner if the very complaints they were making were ever listened to and heeded.

in the last Euro statistics I have red Italians were #1 household coffe drinkers ("expresso")

Possibly, if you only count espresso. However, Finns consume more than two times as much coffee (per capita) as Italians.

And the problem is still ongoing. It's not like people are pulling these numbers out of their ass, in 30 years we have managed to take out 15% of all the rain forests in Brazil. That's not opinion, there were 2 million square miles of forest when we started, 85% of it remains. You can see deforestation from space. You can drive along and see where forest was and grazeland, farmland, or (more often) wasteland is today.

The problem is bad enough that Brazil's government is concerned. It is only active law enforcement that keeps commercial interests from denuding the forest at a faster rate. That again, is not opinion of the some nature head. This is from Brazil's own government. You know, the people that live there.

Actually, the amount of poverty is not strongly linked to economic prosperity. It IS strongly linked to the gini score (which is an application of the lorenz curve), which represents the income inequality between different layers of the population. In a perfect society, the lowest 10 percent of earners would earn 10 percent of national income, the lowest 20 would earn 20, and so on. It's when the lowest 20 percent earn only 5, that you get a problem. This is what is happening to the US. National income is rising, but income inequality is rising even stronger. This is a direct result of the natural aversion of lots of americans against the socialist ideas of wealth redistribution. Every lowered tax, every welfare cut, makes poor people poorer and rich people richer.

See this page for a comparison of gini scores. Lower is better (meaning less income inequality). Note that the US has a gini score of 40, which is on the level of countries like uzbekistan and ethiopia, while most EU countries hover around 30 (which is still quite bad). It also shows why the nordic countries are such great places to live. They have the lowest gini scores.

Good question, though not too hard to research as there's a volume of data and it's a hot issue. Of course, it's controversial, since much of the research is influenced by agribusiness (esp. here in Canada -- AgCan is in industry's pocket) and that means that research is overly reductionist or just plain skewed.

Keywords to look for in your reference search: loss of topsoil in green revolution scenarios (effects of tilling, bare soil, industrial watering, monocrops, heavy feeding crops, pesticides); dependence of farming on chemical inputs; loss of seed sovereignty; crop diversity reduction; the effects of large-scale monocropping on the environment; water usage; permaculture; loss of local knowledge (microclimates, local pest management, seed varieties --again--, plant companions, etc); misguided pest management (overused pesticides etc.); distribution and ownership models that reduce local food security; and so on.

Some good places to start looking outside of google:
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Sustainable Farming Connection
FarmFolk/CityFolk
The Ram's Horn
World Resources Institute
WorldWatch Institute
Pesticide Action Network
Sustainable Agriculture Network
Permaculture
ETC Group

There, that should get you started. You want evidence? there's plenty out there.

While it is certainly true that most post industrial countries all maintaining a stable birthrate or in fact declining this has long been the case. However you completely ignore Asia (esp. China and India) where this problem is already exceeding the resources to cope with it.

Population growth is proceeding at a geometric rate (the time it takes to double is halved every cycle) and without some pretty liberal assumptions about the future of medicine, fertility and cultural changes in the next 25 years in much of the world the situation is dire. I know where you got your last predictions either from theUN or Princeton but these, very optomistic numbers indicate that we will have twice as many people on the planet in 50 years, a very serious situation.

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage. -Jacques Cousteau

I waited for someone to bring up the idiot Lomberg, too bad it was reposted by the Slashdot editors. Since 2001, when that article was published, even the Economist (as pro-business and environmentally sceptical as you can get) have come around and admitted that
a) Global warming is real
b) It is likely caused by humans.

I'd like to refer you all, and especially the Slashdot editors, to MEDIA KIT: Debunking Pseudo-Scholarship: Things a journalist should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist

Current world consumption is around 75 million bbl/day.[2] This might lead one to believe that oil will last our current rate of consumption for another 35+ years.

Unfortunately, there are two problems. Firstly, oil consumption is increasing globally at around 5% annually. Secondly, and much more seriously, oil production is unlikely to proceed at a increasing rate until the last drop comes out of the ground.

The shape of the oil production curve is subject of some debate, but a popular model is the "Hubbert Curve" named for the Shell Oil geologist who, in 1956, used it to successfully predict that oil production in the lower 48 would peak in the early 1970's.

Using the Hubbert Curve for global oil reserves, Kenneth Deffeyes predicts peak global oil production will occur between 2000 and 2007 before beginning an irreversible decline.[3] Other geologists have given more optimistic forecasts, pushing out the start of the decline several more years.

Sources:
[1] World Resources Institute
[2] Energy Information Administration (part of the Department of Energy)
[3] "Hubbert's Peak" by Kenneth Deffeyes, Princeton University Press, 2001.

I posted this comment a few days ago on the energy poll but the poll changed before anyone had a chance to read it. Here it is again.

While googling around for information on world oil production I came across something called the Hubbert Curve.

The Hubbert Curve is a mathematical model that predicts petroleum production levels. It was developed in 1956 by M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist at Shell Oil.

It basically says that the rate of production of oil over the life of the reserve roughly follows a normal (ie, "bell curve") distribution. In other words, the rate of production will increase until half of the available oil has been produced, then the rate of production will begin to decline.

Here is a Hubbert curve plotted in 1996 using the latest available data at the time. The first graph shows the world output of conventional oil in millons of barrels per day over a 100 year span starting in 1950. It assumes an Ultimate Recovery (total amount of oil in the world) of 1750 Gb (gigabarrels). The plot does not include non-conventional sources such as oilsands. The full report is here

The graph predicts that global production will peak in the early 2000's and will decline steadily over the next fifty years. By 2050 production from conventional sources will have decrease by 70%. The second graph shows the Hubbert curve for conventional, non-conventional and gas liquid sources, plus the combined curve for conventional and non-conventional oil. Although production from non-conventional sources is predicted to double over the next 50 year it will not offset the predicted decline in production from conventional sources.

The graph has both its supporters and detractors. One of the inputs to calculating the curve is the Ultimate Recovery and its hard to know exactly what will be. I've found figures on the web that range from 1750 Gb to as high as 2300 Gb. However, as this article states, even if ultimate recovery is as high as 2600 Gb, the peak will only be delayed till 2019. Here is a critique of the Hubbert Curve.

What I find interesting about the curve is that oil production will not suddenly drop to zero when the oil runs out (the doomsday scenario). Rather production will steadily decline over a long period as existing sources dry up and new sources become harder and more expensive to exploit. At the same time, increasing oil prices will lead to the development of new sources of energy. As new energy production expands demand for oil will probably decrease, leading to lower oil prices. Oil production will finally stop when the cost of extracting the remaining oil exceeds market price.

I'm giving up on debating global warming on Slashdot, it seems just about everyone is convinced its bunk. With the weather getting more and more extreme, could you at least understand why we are worried?

Well, I just wanted to make everyone aware of the new distributed project - www.climateprediction.net.
Whether you agree with the theory of human caused global warming or not, with this you can help getting the world scientific community more accurate climate models.

Unfortunately only a Windows client available at the moment, but a Linux one is in development. Personally I think this project and the
Folding at Home distributed project are much more deserving of peoples' clock cycles than Seti or distributed.net.

Cheers,
Lars

MEDIA KIT: Debunking Pseudo-Scholarship: Things a journalist should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist

Believe it or not, many people do not want to live in large cities
if by many you mean less than 25% in the USA
Or, in Canada, the 23% of Canadians who live in a rural environment.

We have different tastes than you do, so please stop trying to impose your "taste" on us
Do you commute to work? do you live in a suburban or (truly) rural environment?

Here we go again with this taste/fashion arguement of "sprawl"

fashion and taste are irrelevant. SPRAWL is real. Drive between detroit and dearborn. Between Toronto and Mississauga. Between %yournearestcity% and %somebedroomcommunity%. People who are buying $150k cookie cutter houses on 120x200 lots anyplace the land is flat is the problem. They depend on massive highways and byways to get their kids to school, food for dinner, a cup of coffee (starbucks drivethrough..). It is ecological suicide. The property that we are building these suburbs is (nearly gauranteed) to be the most productive in NorthAmerica (thats because communities in NA where plopped ontop of good agricultural land)

The part payed for by my fuel taxes. Unfortunately, much of that gets robbed for bike trails, METRO rail and busses

Do you *really* believe this? Reread my earlier post - your FUEL taxes dont even pay for the paving/maintenance/building of roads(!). The other issues (the sprawl itself) IS NOT payed by you -- its payed by everyone. BTW, each situation is different, but public transit is a minor expense in relation to the roads themselves... and bike trails/pedestrian transit routes -- really, common, are you joking? Most NA cities pay little more than lip service to these needs, let alone spend actual $. ARe you bloody kidding???

Do you really think that a turbine could extract more kinetic energy from wind than 2344 times its land area of forest extracts with friction? Remember, modern turbines have three rather thin blades, whereas forests are by definition filled with foiliage. In terms of surface area against the wind, a single tree within the same area that a turbine takes would have thousands if not millions of times the area. Also, trees aren't very rigid against moderate windspeeds, converting wind into waste heat much more than solid objects do.

Plus, the amount of heat that atmospheric carbon dioxide causes to be forced into the atmosphere will more than make up for 16,000 TWh of turbine extraction. (0.3 watts per square meter yeilds more than 150,000 TWh over the earth's illuminated surface area.)

Ummm...Saudi Arabia itself has 25 percent of the world's known oil reserves. The U.S. only has 3 percent of the world's known oil reserves.

"Electric wheels just dont turn as hard as gas-driven ones. (torque)"

Electric motors actually have more torque, pound-for-pound, than gasoline engines do. Furthermore, electric motors have a perfectly flat torque curve from 0 RPMs, whereas most gasoline engines don't hit their peak torque until at least 1,750 rpm. This means electric motors have a MUCH larger area under the torque curve !! Thus, I would argue electric motors have substantially more torque than gasoline engines. If you don't believe me, check out this link and this link.

The paper is written signed by the minister of environment of the former social democratic gouverment in 1999. The new gouverment (Currently presidents of the EU) has a very different perspective on the environment. During their first month in power they hired the infameous Bjoern Lomborg to create a and Institute of Environmental assessment . For further information on Bjørn Lomborg see here

Go read The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

And while you're at it, pick up a few issues of the Weekly World News and find out what the aliens are up to.

Just because it has the word "Skeptical" in the title doesn't mean that it contains sound reasoning. This book is written by someone with no credentials in the field, using questionable references.

It constantly amazes me that so many "technical" and "scientific" people on slashdot will just blindly accept environmental reports without looking for the supporting facts.

Right. So don't blindly accept this book either.

• Conservation International
• Defenders of Wildlife
• Earthjustice
• National Audubon Society
• National Wildlife Federation
• Natural Resources Defense Council
• The Nature Conservancy
• The Ocean Conservancy
• The Trust for Public Land
• World Resources Institute
• World Wildlife Fund

Why doesn't the government pull the money out and then we can all go straight to growing hemp for all our pulp needs?

And you could use the zero THC varieties, so don't go crazy with the "evil weed" bullshit, ok?

My bad - I did some research and in terms of CO2 and other greenhouse gases you're right - we're the worst offenders. But in terms of other pollutants (water, etc) here is a short list from the world resource institute (here):

Over half the population (nearly 700 million people) lacks access to clean water, and consumes drinking water contaminated with animal and human waste that exceeds the applicable maximum permissible levels. Overall only 5 percent of household waste and about 17 percent of industrial waste receive any treatment before entering local irrigation ditches, ponds, lakes, and streams.

All of China's bodies of water are polluted to various degrees. Serious pollution has been documented in the country's seven major watersheds: Huai, Hai, Liao, Songhua, Chang (Yangtze), Zhu (Pearl) and Huang (Yellow).

China faces severe deforestation problems, which contributed to the devastating floods during the summer of 1998.

Air pollution in some Chinese cities is among the highest ever recorded, averaging more than ten times the standard proposed by the World Health Organization.

Air pollution threatens public health and welfare on a large scale. China's six largest cities - Beijing, Shenyang, Chongqing, Shanghai, Xian, and Guangzhou - rank among the most polluted in the world.

In Beijing, 40 percent of autos surveyed -- and 70 percent of taxis -- failed to meet the most basic emission standards.

So although they beat us in terms of Greenhouse gases, the yare still much more of a polluting nation than the U.S. And in terms of the media comment you made, anyone in this country can start their own news web site if they want and the government won't interfere at all. How is it that's not freedom of the press? It's totally the opposite for China

US refuses to sign a treaty which would limit the US greatly but not place any limitations on the third world, where most pollution is coming from

you're kidding, right? either that or you're an idiot. Has it also occurred to you that the US has the resources available to do something about its gigantic CO2 emissions, whilst the third world doesn't.

US wishes to drill in an area the size of Dulles airport out of a park the size of South Carolina, in order to not subsidize the brutal Saudi regime

you haven't really understood the concept of environmental impact have you? "We only spilt an oil slick the size of dullas airport in the atlantic...". brutal regime? read up on your president's record on handing out death penalties. Where are the clothes you're wearing made? in a sweat shop in Indonesia or china? Then you accept that it's OK for Children to work 14 hour days to survive, so what are you whining about?

pollution per capita -- as another poster has pointed out, the US doesn't pollute the most per capita, but even this misses the point: the US produces more per capita then anyone else, and pollutes less per production than others

You do understand that America's income is based on services don't you. That is the US doesn't actually manufacture a great deal any more as a proportion of GDP when compared to the rest of the world. I'm sure even you can understand that industry is more polluting than office work, unless you are the US, in which case a 5 litre car is clearly necessary to get down to the 7-11 where you can stock up on junk food. It never ceases to amaze me that the nation with the highest obesity rate in the world also has higher rate of malnutrition than any other 1st world country.

Is it possible that your real desire is just to see the US undefended?

hahahaha. indeed you are correct about the withdrawal provision, as is the case in any treaty. Withdrawing was clearly not in the interests of humanity though. You might have spotted that the original poster was talking about the US being self serving. Read it over and you will see that you have spectacularly missed the point.

I probably won't respond to anything else you say on the politial part of this subthread since what I'm really interested in debating is the global warming part.

Agreed. Anyway, as much as I enjoy this challenging exchange (I do, really), it's probably time to move on. I would just like to say one last thing about the whole Chavez affair. While I agree with you that Latin America government are corrupt in general, that paints only half of the picture, i.e. that businesses in those area also tend to be corrupt. After all, to use an appropriate analogy, it takes two to tango. This is why sticking to due process (and in the case of Venezuela, the constitutional process) is essential, and should be encouraged. In my view Bush failed to encourage the constitutional process because his administration clearly dislikes Chavez. That was a blatant faux-pas on the government's part.

In other words, "Global warming is probably real. But if it isn't, we should act like it is since all it means is that it isn't happening now but will probably happen someday." I can't argue with that logic. If that's the way you see it then we might as well abandon all research--if our actions with or without global warming are the same, there's no reason to research it.

Well, that's not exactly what I meant. What I believe would go more along these lines: "Global warming is probably real. Until we know for sure that it isn't, we should act as if it was in order not to make the situation worse. It just so happens that in changing our habits in order to avert this probable catastrophe, we also solve another problem: our dependence on fossil fuels, which has dire economic and geopolitical consequences. So we kill two birds - or at least one and possible other one - with one stone (to use a non-politically correct saying... :-)

If the satellites and radiosondes for the last 23 (satellites) to 50 (radiosondes) years are showing a slight cooling and the surface record shows heating, the surface measurements are not reliable.

Read the stories again: radiosondes measure atmospheric, not surface, temperatures. In the NASA papers, they clearly show that the difference is not between recorded surface temperatures, but between recorded surface and atmospheric temperatures. The surface indeed is warming up, but the atmosphere is not warming up at the same rate, and parts of it are cooling instead. As I said, this shows that the computer models used to predict atmospheric changes are incorrect, which may mean that global warming is slower than expected (let's hope that's what it means). However, the radiosonde data does not invalidate surface temperature records, because it doesn't measure surface temperatures. The discrepancy is with the expected atmospheric warming and the actual recorded one, which is lower than expected. Thus the question of reliability does not apply to surface temperature measurements (save for the so-called "asphalt effect"), but rather to the computer models used to predict atmospheric changes.

In one section it talks about reducing emissions by 17% while in another part it says that it's emissions have increased by half the rate of growth of the economy.

Actually, the arctile says the country's energy consumption has increased by half the rate of growth of the economy, not its emissions. Those are two different things. Emissions did increase in the first part of the 90s, mind you, but they have been decreasing in the second half. A few more links about a piece of news that was quite underreported in the U.S.:

World Carbon Emissions Fall

Carbon Emissions Data | China

China and Climate Change

And here is an analysis by the US NGO that published the original report. In this analysis the researchers said they cross-examined their data a second time after the Washington Post claimed that China had underreported its actual emission figures while inflating its actual economic growth. The NRDC still found that China had in fact decreased its carbon emissions while enjoying a healthy economic growth. So the two are not irreconcilable, and the "China excuse" is not a valid reason for the U.S. to drop out of Kyoto...unless you are suggesting that americans are somehow less capable at taking on the environmental challenge than the chinese are...

Sure, there will be short-term costs, but these will be quickly recouped, and the goal is quite worthy of those small sacrifices (energetic independence and reducing the likelihood of a probable global warming).

Anyway, that's my opinion. We probably won't be able to see eye to eye on this, but still I respect your position.

... only for certain values of "demolish" and "most". Be sure to look at these opposing views as well as the book itself:

• UCS examines The Skeptical Environmentalist
• Nine things journalists should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist

-Miko

He [Bjorn Lomborg] has no professional training -- and has done no professional research -- in ecology, climate science, resource economics, environmental policy, or other fields covered by his new book.

The same article mentions the 30,000 footnotes in his book.

Please give a page reference, I have a copy of his book handy, and I'd like to see that

As a non-fan of Mr. Lomborg, I'd like to offer up a few links:

Anti-Lomborg - Responses to Bjorn's environmental writing

Debunking Pseudo-Scholarship: Things a journalist should know about The Skeptical Environmentalist

Union of Concerned Scientists examine The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjørn Lomborg

I know the area the network covers and the areas where things like GSM connectivity are good are in dense areas that are no where near as spaced out as the land scape of the united states. I looked at a map of europe, even encarta. If that 4M square mile figure you quoted earlier is for the entire area of the map shown it includes quite a bit of area that is not densely populated like other parts of europe.

It does include parts of former russia, not huge chunks, but significant portions relative to the rest of eruope.

They have MUCH more population density which means there can be more demand for such services in a smaller area making them more profitable to the point where they can exist and make a little money.

As far as I understand they still lag behind us in DSL capacity. I am about 30 miles from Atlanta and I have a nice 1.5M/385k DSL.

If you roll out a service to all of the continent of North America you will be covering a huge amount of sparsely populated areas. If you roll out to most of europe where MOST of the people are you will get most of the people. Whereas the population of North America is quite a bit more spread out.

You can quote to me every figure on the land area of coutries but my point is it is more costly to roll out these technooges into a more sparsely populated area that is spread out. (That is North America).

Here is a nice PDF which has the land areas PER country and the total land area for Europe.

PDF

The land area of eruope is about 2,269,180 hectares. The land area of europe minus the "Russian Federation", which is as far as I know a part of Eruope, is a mere 569600 hectares.

Population density and land area.

I punched the numbers in for each little country in eruope to come up with this figure just so I could see every country individually and its land area.

Anyways

Jeremy

Farming with salt water? That is HUGE. You can build a climate controlled green house, you can have artificial light and chemical fertilizer but you always need WATER to grow things. And lots of them. They are hard to "create" (water distillation plants or wait for nature to do its thing) and store (massive water towers if you don't have a reliable water source). And fresh water is NOT necessary an infinite resource! If you can rely on the sea, you are guaranteed a regular and reliable supply.

Imagine a world with no Hunger... it got to be more "matter" than, say a drop in Napstar traffic, don't you think?

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