Americans Gearing up to Fight Global Warming

TechnoGuyRob writes "Global warming has been one of the most controversial and debated issues in the political and scientific sphere. A recent poll published in the Chicago Sun-Times now shows that 'An overwhelming majority of Americans think they can help reduce global warming and are willing to make the sacrifices that are needed, a new poll shows. After years of controversy, 71 percent of Americans now say they think global warming is real.'" (Jamie adds: and all it took was twelve years of overwhelming scientific consensus.)

Comments

Re:Mankind is insignificant, yet doesn't realize i

[Decaff]

The sun is going to burn out in a few billion years. As it does so, it will cool and expand slowly enveloping the earth.

No; the Sun is actually slowly warming up.

It's pretentious and incorrect to think that something as insignificant as mankind is the main cause of global warming.

No; it is realistic and correct. We have already had a significant impact on the composition of the atmosphere in terms of CO2 concentration - the main source of warming.

No, and no

[stomv]

First of all, DoD spending is indeed massive within the United States. Second of all, neither Social Security nor Medicare revenue is eligible to be spent by Congress. It's not part of the general budget. This was done to keep Congress from raiding the social programs so that they could cut taxes on those who didn't need the social programs.

Some data:
Social security, medicare, and other retirements: 36% (and can't be touched by Congress in the budget)
National Defense and veterans affairs: 23%
Net interest on the Debt: 7%
Physical, human, and community development (nat'l parks, education, job training, NSF, NASA, etc): 10%
Social Programs: 21%
Law enforcement: 3%

So yeah, cutting back on the Iraq war (and the rest of the 31% == 23%/(100%-36%) of discretionary spending Congress spends on the military) would indeed leave quite a bit available for alternative energy research, spending on public and mass transit, pollution enforcement mechanisms, and other ways to reduce global warming.

Um, wtf are you talking about? Mod parent down.

[TheNoxx]

Even in the 2004 federal budget, military spending that is disclosed to the public (not counting all the CIA and NSA bullshit, and all the other shadow-ops shit) was nearly 20% of all federal spending; the only thing the federal budget spends more on is Social Security. So no, it's not small potatoes compared to medicare (11.7%), or social welfare (8.4%), or medicaid (7.9%), or anything else, not to mention when compared to the rest of the world.

And no, the elected Republicans are not indistinguishable from socialists, which is why more and more americans are finding themselves below the poverty line; they are far from socialist in any respect, unless you count meddling in people's lives when not asked to, but that's more of a totalitarian/authoritarian aspect.

MOD -1 WRONG

[metamatic]

The cost of the Iraq War, along with all other DoD-related expenses (including funding the entire military) is small potatoes compared to spending on social programs.

Try a pretty picture.

Here's another.

Or, go to the source. HUD is $44b, health and human services is $697b, social security is $624b, military spending is $541b (DoD is $504b plus $37b for veterans' care).

So even by the official figures, it isn't "small potatoes", it's comparable to the entire social security or health budgets. And then there's the deficit interest payments...

Not that I'm against cutting corporate welfare. Far from it.

Re:There's a lot of potential

[Ours]

Why not? Many countries tax cars with bigger engines more then smaller ones. AND they tax the fuel as well. The end result is cars with equal performance being more economical (in MPG therms) in Europe then in the US. Sure, the rich guys still get their Hummers and Ferraris but (unfortunally for the enviroment) it's their liberty.

Fact check

[JourneyExpertApe]

The heat of combustion of coal is about 26 MJ/kg (see here). The overall efficiency of electric power generation for coal is about 35% (see here). Therefore, eight pounds of coal would produce about 28 MJ of electricity. If a laptop uses, say, 50 W maximum, that eight-pound lump of coal could power a laptop under maximum load for about 158 hours, or about 6.5 days. That's a lot of power.