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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.)
And yet, everything the feds touch turns to shit. Regardless of who is in power the gov't will bow to the lobbies and big oil has a big lobby. Hydrogen will happen, but it will happen when big oil figures out how to make lots of money off of it.
From the article:
>After years of controversy, 71 percent of Americans now say they
>think global warming is real, according to a telephone survey of
>1,200 people for the advocacy group Environmental Defense
So this result has some built-in bias.
If called upon, I will undoubtedly help to reduce emissions and make an environmental difference. Actually, my family does already. We carpool, telecommute (when possible), walk when we can, recycle everything we can, and use gas-powered tools as little as possible (I love power tools, though).
I have to say that the whole media/government FUD over whether or not global warming actually exists really rings a bell with me. The dis-information campaign (about emissions and pollution) reminds me very much of the decades of time when industry and government were disseminating information that smoking hadn't been proven to cause cancers. Decades of mis-information about nicotine addiction and cancer risks was backed up by industry-paid doctors and lawyers who lulled us to sleep on the issue. The same thing has been going on WRT pollution and global warming.
Humans accelerate climate change - whether it is clear-cutting ancient forests, industrial pollution, wasteful production, or emissions... To me, the real question is, "When will we take a responsible stance/take action on helping the Earth begin to heal?"
A Passionate Independent Musician
I'm working in Kenya right now. They have massive deforestation here, with only 1.5% tree cover. Right now in the north of the country there are about 5 million people who are starving (or will be in a few weeks). These are the kind of disasters that will happen everywhere in the world if nothing is done. Desertification, crop failures, extreme weather, flooding. What are simple solutions? How about reducing soil erosion? Re-plant forests. Stop building massive houses on sandbars that trigger flooding. Use more friendly power generation to reduce smog and acid rain. ALL of these solutions would have immediate impacts and improve the quality of life not only for the earth but us humans as well. There is a reason why cancer rates and respiratory disorders are increasing. We are quickly poisoning ourselves, and if we don't ack NOW,it will only get worse. (cue Bladerunner opening sequence)...
How about third: Is global warming actually a bad thing? Or are there benefits as well? I think we should stop wasting our time trying to stop global warming and instead learn how to adapt to it.
That's impossible! Fox News says so!
Last Saturday morning, Steve Forbes said this about global warming: "There are no real facts to back it up. It's now become a religion instead of science and great fundraiser for extreme environmentalists. I don't think it's a hoax, just bogus science, like eugenics was decades ago.
Well, the extreme environmentalists, like the Kyoto Protocol, want to put a straightjacket and impose socialism which they can't do with red so now they do it with green.
As countries get richer, the environment gets better.
There you have it. America's most popular news station says that global warming is a religion, compares it to eugenics, and claims it's a filthy commie plot. And even if it isn't, it's the poor countries' fault, not America's.
Isn't 29% the same percentage that still approve of the President's performance? Interesting...
All's true that is mistrusted
I don't necessarily agree with all the top-down government solutions proposed. I support revising CAFE, but am leary of what/how they get things done. My wife and I put our money where our mouths are. We do this for the environment:
- Drive a high-MPG car, our Matrix gets 34-36 mpg on the hiway.
- ride bikes whenever possible.
- have 1.7kw photovoltaic solar panels on our house, piped into the grid
- other hippy stuff like compost and recycling
I'd also like to say how stupid all the NIMBYs on Cape Cod are. We desperately need wind farms in New England. They complain about the windmills blocking the view, but if there's orange smog over everything you won't even be able to see the water. I've been to Holland and the modern windmills there are elegant and non-intrusive despite the size.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The sad fact is that since 1988, the contrarian position on global warming has been nothing more than a snow job by Republican politicians and Republican interests, especially right-wing "think tanks" paid to churn out talking points that benefit industry and politicians.
The depth of right-wing hackery is demonstrated not just by George W. Bush, but by George Will, who to this day denies that anthropogenic global warming is real. His denials read like creationists flailing their tiny fists against 150 years of consensus on evolution. "One degree might be the margin of error" -- that is quite simply false.
To see George Will, the face of modern conservatism, in full petulant splendor, you have to watch the video. All he brings to the table -- all any global-warming denier can bring to the table -- is a snow job of out-of-context quotes from the 1970s about how some scientists thought the globe was cooling, not warming. Pretty sad. But that's one of the many differences between scientists and pundits. When new facts come to light, scientists change their minds.
But there has been a Republican pattern, from 1988, when James Hansen went before the U.S. Senate to explain that he was "99 percent" certain that global warming was real and that it was to some extent caused by humans, to earlier this year when the Bush administration's appointee tried to muzzle the very same James Hansen on the very same issue. Over and over we see partisan politics as the opposition to actual science. By arguing that any action on global warming would destroy our economy (not true -- carbon emission per GDP dollar has gone down dramatically since 1970 while productivity has boomed), Republicans play the issue as a political weapon, forcing Democrats to adopt moderate positions. Remember Bush's campaign ad making fun of Kerry for even considering a gasoline tax?
And who suffers? We are already in the midst of the Sixth Extinction, and though the first effects of global warming are just beginning to be felt, it's about to slam the ecosystem like a freight train. The only hope we have is that technology will take a quantum leap soon enough to allow us to effectively change planetary climate, on a scale we can't today engineer. But that's a crap shoot, a total unknown (much like global dimming, by the way, which we also know next to nothing about, and which if part of a natural cycle may mean global warming is going to get much, much worse over the next century). We need to do something besides hope.
It seems that it's too late to halt global warming's effects, thanks largely to fifteen years of Republican dissembling, but maybe if we start now we can mitigate to some extent the horrific human death, disease and displacement that will be everyday news on our grandchildren's planet. All we can do is start now. Maybe if these poll numbers are accurate, finally, finally we may be able to help.
You're still using toploaders in the US? Fascinating. Then again, so do the Japanese. Hmmm. I wonder what the advantages are?
Graduate of the LeRoy Funkified Badass School of Soul.
My house is lit almost exclusively by high efficiency bulbs.
Over the last year I have insulated 60% of my house (built in 1890, when wood was plentiful and insulation was non-existant.)
I have recently purchased a VW Golf TDI. It is a diesel that gets 47+ mpg Highway and can run on Biodiesel with no conversions (a kit is required for veggie oil though).
The nice thing about steps like these is that it saves consumers money! With my Wife and I switching most of our driving to the new VW we are saving ~$170 a month in gas. The extra insulation has saved us a ton in heating costs. And those low power consumption bulbs will pay for themselves in savings long before they burn out.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Build more nuke plants. The US and Russia literally has tons of old bomb cores that could be made into many more tons of reactor fuel.
There are already MASSIVE subsidies for biofuels. Ethanol is not that much of an improvement of gas since a lot of fossil fuels are used to grow the corn used to make the ethanol. Methanol is usually made from coal, oil, and or natural gas.
BTW as far as NIMBY goes I agree. I have a nuclear power plant in my city. I like it a lot more than a coal, gas, or oil plant.
Solar is a good but it is not a total solution. It needs to be added to the mix. Wind I have a lot less faith it. I worry that wind will be the hydroelectric dams of the 21 century. They seem clean and green but really are not. I worry about what happens when you extract huge amounts of energy from wind systems. Wind is good for pumping water and very remote sites but massive wind farms seem like a bad idea.
The real issue is that it really isn't simple.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
introduce surcharges for:
- any gear that can't be switched of (instead of standby)
- any newly build house, that doesn't use a solar heat collector to warm up its water
- any passenger car with a consumption of more then 8 l/100km
if the surcharges are high enough, the industry will sell ecological useful products, since they are cheaper to the customer.
Pfft.. 79% of people think that McDonald's hamburgers are good too.
Percentages mean nothing. For years, the vast majority of doctors thought they knew what caused ulcers. One guy, ONE GUY, was laughed out of a conference for suggesting that ulcers could be caused by a bacteria.
Guess what? He was right. That's a standing fact. So, this whole "the majority is right" argument is complete crap. The majority thought that the world was flat at some point too.
Just saying over and over and over again that "we're right about global warming" doesn't make it right, particularly when there are many scientists that don't agree, despite of "percentages".
Al Gore giving speeches on Global Warming on the coldest day of the year in New York a few years back. He looked like an idiot.
Unfortunately, most of the American public can't be bothered to look past what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. These two incidents have ruined the reputation of nuclear power - which is too bad, really. I spent several years working with the nuclear-powered ships of the US Navy, and those ships are a testament to the tremendous advantage of safely-managed nuclear power.
I, for one, hope that Americans realize the advantage of nuclear power before it's too late.
All your sig are belong to us.
General Motors did a study to determine at what point gas prices would influence consumers' demand for SUVs. According to customers who purchased GM SUVs, 87 octane (regular unleaded) gas would have to sell for $5.00 per gallon in order to influence their choice to drive a Soccer-Mom-Assault-Vehicle. I'm all for government influencing consumer choice, but the only way I'd support that level of taxation is if all the money went to building "green" public transportation. And you know that wouldn't happen, we've got a war against Eurasia to fund!
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
Going down in an elevator is survivable whereas a freefall from the top floor is not. If change occurs too rapidly, animal and plant life can't adapt quickly enough to survive.
The question is what happens in a worse case senario where natural global warming combines with man made global warming. Will it tip some balance?
Wake up already. The rest of the world dumped top loaders decades ago. No innovation is needed, just changing US consumer mindsets to not buy the junk their parents used. Front loaders are the norm all over the world, and they're dirt cheap too. So why do I have to pay ~$1000 for one from major outlets like Sears and Best Buy?
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0111/p01s03-sten.htm l uses algae to remove 40% of the CO2, 86% of NO2 and produces ethanol as a byproduct!
Plus there's tons of coal about (pun intentded)
At the risk of being labeled a troll, the parent post completely misses three very important points:
.25 MPG per year, and tell the auto manufacturers that they have to meet it, no excuses. If they fall under, they have to stop selling all models with less economy than their target until they get back into balance. People that really have to have that 16mpg Tahoe will be able to get it (capitalism will make sure that they pay whatever premium is appropriate considering how hard it'll be to get one) and those that can get by with a smaller vehicle will have the great incentive to do so (faster delivery times because the source will be unconstrained).
1) S/he has absolutely no understanding about what motivates people to buy the cars that they buy. It has very, very little to do with ongoing operating costs and almost everything to do with what fulfilling an emotional desire (coolness, percieved (but not actual) safety, convenience, etc.). The number of people that do a full life cost analysis of their car purchase could probably be counted on two hands.
2) For those that do think of cost, a $1000 increase in the price of a car has a much greater impact on the purchasing decision than $2000 increase in operating costs over a year. Pain now is almost always more important than pain later.
3) The impact of higher fuel costs will disporportionately impact the lower economic classes. Commuting costs to their jobs is a proportionately higher percentage of their income and they can less afford the extra expenses. Regardless of whether they are taking a bus or driving a car, they need to get to their job and raising fuel costs will raise that expense. Environmental issues are the classic network externalities problem that a pure capitalistic approach fails at. Why set a public policy on this point that would punish the lower classes just so the middle and upper classes can continue to waste the remaining gasoline driving unnecessary SUVs and high-performance sports cars. That just doesn't make social sense.
The CAFE approach seems to be the best one, but the govt doesn't have the guts to actually do it right. Set the total average fleet MPG requirement, ratchet it up
OK, rant over.
Funny you should mention WIC, I have witnessed people buy Milk and cheese with WIC and load it into a Mercedes Benz, is that what congress had in mind?
I can't let this go unchallenged. First off, the way you say it implies that this has happened on multiple occasions with multiple people. I'd wager that it's only a single family that this is happening with. All programs have their cheats, and just because there is a cheat living near you doesn't mean that WIC isn't genuinely helping the 99+% of the other people that are on it.
Secondly, you're a little presumptuous calling out the family for driving a Mercedes Benz. They probably didn't buy it new. They could have bought it before they fell on hard times, and kept it to save money, instead of spending $20k to buy a Kia, just so they can meet your stereotype of what a person on WIC should drive. Or they could have bought it used -- a ten year old Mercedes can be cheaper than a 1 year old Ford, especially if you bought it at a police auction, or as a refurbished car after an accident.
Or it could have been new. She could have gotten it from her drug dealing brother. She doesn't like him dealing drugs, but she accepted the car anyway, because it allows her to get to her new job on time, instead of relying on the uncertain Mass Transit, which means she won't be fired, which is good, because the job come with health insurance, and she can't afford to pay for both rent and Jimmy's dialysis otherwise.
Since you know nothing of the particular situation, it's unfair for you to disparage the entire WIC program on an isolated incident.
--
Do not judge lest you be judged, asshole.
Once again a global-warming denier compares a decade of peer-reviewed scientific publications to ... well, in this case, a talk given by a novelist.
Consensus is precisely how science advances. Scientific consensus is precisely what should inform us on scientific matters. It has nothing to do with avoiding debate, it is a signifier that the debate has already been held. Go read Kuhn or something.
In fact, I have been thinking that the best way to guarentee that America will change is to pass a tax that will increase over the years. Say it will go up by .25/year for the next 8-12 years. I guarentee that Americans will either move to small cars or will insist on higher mileage autos. Than we can drop all this silly mandated MPG.
If we were smart, we would then use part of that for public trans, alternative energy as well as roads. But we are busy running up long term deficit, so I do not think that this congress/admin will have the guts to do that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think it's pretty much accepted that the Kyoto treaty and its associated targets are bunk now. It's probably only the Bush administration's opposition to it that has kept it alive. In kind with your sweeping aspersions about scientists and Europeans, Environmentalists are not in it for the money. Some might be, maybe even a lot. But not all. By the same measure it's far more obvious that the current energy policy is designed for a cotire of politicians and oil companies to make even more money. That's not so surprising, but what is truly scary is that this is now the case for US foreign policy too.
I agree that ethanol and bio-diesel are obvious replacements for oil and also that the market will see to that. Solar power at it's finest.
BTW, I heard a black man killed someone the other day; give me one good reason to trust these people!
I think I know why we're stalled on this one. I think it might be a good idea if our fascist dictator in charge actually believed in global warming.
"The jury's still out." No. It hasn't been for a good solid decade now, and you'd have to be an asshole and an idiot to believe otherwise.
Al Gore gives a great presentation on Global Warming (in fact, he just did at Drew University last night) and he cites a survey of scientific journals to see how much global warming is in doubt. That survey found that of 900+ randomly chosen articles, not a single one expressed any doubt that global warming is real. They did the same with a random set of mass media (newspaper, tv, etc...) articles on global warming and found just over 50% expressed doubt about the existence of global warming. No wonder so many people in the US (including G.W. Bush) don't believe that global warming exists.
-=-=-=-=-=
I'd rather be flamed than ignored.
A problem with the studies that affirm global warming is that they're either very speculative or based on too a very narrow data "cut".
In the first case, they're reports on the results of computation using this or that climate model, where the different climate factors, such as percent of CO2 in the atmosphere, receive very arbitrary weights. If, for instance, you attribute different weights to these factors or add more factors, such as the likelihood we're entering a new Ice Age (in the '70s tons of studies focused on this), the results vary a lot. One such calculation might conclude that no matter what humans do the world will end very cold. Other might conclude that our warming actions might actually conter balance the cold, keeping the temperatures as they are. And others will say that our actions are warming the world. Currently these last are favoured, because their results seem to coincide more or less with actual collected data, but it's possible to argue that in others, "global cooling" models, a small temperature increase for some years followed by a sharp decrease in temperature isn't unlikely. So, how can we say which of these models, weights, factors etc. are the correct ones? I don't think it's possible without many centuries of measurements.
In the second case, the studies are based on the behaviour of this or that factor when everything else is excluded. So, if you go study what happens in a lab experiment when there's an increase in the percent of CO2, it becomes absolutely clear that it's a warming effect, no doubt about that. But how does this effect relates with all the other climate-changing effects is difficult to say, which takes us to the above problem of the models.
Furthermore, when one takes this problem from the scientific field to the political, another question arises: a global warming is really a bad thing? I mean, from the point of view of agriculture, more CO2 means, AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong, bigger crops, bigger vegetables and the like, and so more food. And more food means less hungry people in the world. So, one might ask, without any ill intent, whether the benefits aren't worth the trouble of increased sea levels and some more extinguished species. Are they?
The above points, plus some others I haven't mentioned, don't allow me to buy the whole idea of cutting greenhouse gases as being The Obvious Good ThingTM. There're tons of questions that should be answered, and very well answered, before we're sure that going forward into changing the whole industrial world is really needed. What if we actually do it, causing all the unemplyment and lowering of living standards it'll mean, only to discover in a few decades that the whole effort wasn't needed? Who'd pay the needy for all the social troubles this move will have caused them?
This, IMHO, is a question most people who write on the subject forget to ask.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I drive a Mustang GT, and I get a whopping 15 mpg in town, and as much as 25 mpg on the highway under ideal conditions. I'd say I average around 16... BUT! I more than likely use VASTLY less fuel than you do. I telecommute, I don't drive during times of high traffic volume for any reason, and I end up driving about 6,000 miles a year.
Some of my friends with their 60 mpg Hybrids give me a hard time, but then after we work out that they have a 40 mile commute, each way, every day, that they drive over 20,000 miles a year... we find that they are using the exact same amount of gas that I am... plus they are putting lots of extra wear and tear on their vehicle, which cost them twice as much to begin with, and adds to the congestion on the road, and their own stress levels for having to spend over two hours a day in a car!
So yeah, I say raise the gas tax... make it $5 a gallon. I might cut back on my driving a little bit more -- walk or bike to the store, instead of drive, perhaps... but I can still enjoy my sports car when the weather's nice, and the traffic is light, and the folks who make the DC area roads hell by commuting will pay the price for living so far from where they work.
Oh yeah, one last thing... it's not just the "rich" folks with Hummers and Ferraris... damn near everyone has some sort of SUV or Minivan that gets under 25 mpg. Even a Honda Accord only gets 20-25 mpg around town! And for the most part, you have to be richer to drive an efficient Hybrid than you do to drive an old Cutlass.
So if you want to raise the fuel tax, great. But if you want to raise the tax on "gas guzzlers", you need to do a few things first: 1) lower the cost of hybrids (or better yet, find a low cost alternative)... 2) make fuel efficient cars that don't look like something out of the Jetsons... I'd drive a hybrid Mustang... but a Prius?? I wouldn't drive it even if it did 0-60 in 3.8 seconds!
And that's to say nothing of improving public transportation... anyway </rant>
-brian
I agree that fossil fuels don't include the external costs of global warming, and therefore are not at their correct economic price.
I'm less sure that gas taxes are the right way to deal with that, although the are certainly better than nothing. One reason this is a problem is that it's not just gasoline, but all fossil fuels that are a problem -- gas taxes alone will not prevent people from doing stupid things like burning coal to produce hydrogen or alcohol which aren't taxed.
The better way to deal with it would be determine the sustainable amount of carbon dioxide we can emit, chop it in half to be really sure, and produce tradable emission rights. If you don't have the right to the emissions, you can't emit it. The market will set the correct price for the emission rights.
The big problem with my plan is enforcement, you'd probably have to require the producers of the fuel to have the emission rights rather than the emitter.
If you were going to do taxes though, the right way is to make a law that requires 10 cent per gallon increase every 6 months for the next 50 years, so that:
1. People would know gas is going to keep getting more and more expensive and start seriously looking for ways to reduce their consumption
2. People won't be slammed by it all at once, they'll have time to change their behavior without dramatic economic impact.
Why not? As long as there is full disclosure, I don't have a problem with lead paint or asbestos. Lead paint has better color and lasts longer. Asbestos would save (and still is saving) large sums of money every year. As long as the consumer is aware of the health risks and cleanup costs, that is fine with me.
I'm also OK with crack. I don't smoke it, but if you want to, that is fine. People are going to smoke crack regardless of what the law says. Make it legal and collect a tax on it. The money from the tax could go to education and healthcare. People who abuse it will be naturally dis-selected.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
All the enviro-weenies I know are just ecstatic over hybrids and wind farms, and many are even grudgingly supportive of nuclear power.
It shouldn't even need to be said that environmentalists are not a monolithic group. But in your case, it seems an exception needs to be made. Environmentalists come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of preferences and agendas, with all sorts of views on modern life. It makes as much sense to say what you did as it makes for me to claim that, because you have articulated a right-wing position, you must have everything in common with those nutjobs in Alabama who were chaining themselves to the Ten Commandments to keep them from being removed.
I'm not in favor of destroying "industrial society." That would require the deaths of billions of people, because it is industrial society that sustains us. I am, however, in favor of slimming it down somewhat. We need to be using fewer resources, and using them in a more efficient and more egalitarian way. So long as we put the pursuit of our own material wealth ahead of everything else, we'll continue lurching from environmental crisis to environmental crisis, destroying any remaining wilderness and slaughtering inconvenient wildlife as we go along. I don't believe we're wise enough or humble enough to hold ourselves back.
My ideal world of vegetarian diets, walkable communities, locally grown organic food, and kickass mass transit systems may not be a world you would enjoy living in. But if you have two honest brain cells to rub together, you can't compare that to calling for the elimination of industrial society.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It will not. But if you have confortable public transportation, quiet, with free electricity and Wifi, and twice faster as a car, why would you drive? I think US, which more than 50% richer, can afford 1st class seats of the ICE, Shinkansen, TGV, or second class of newer french regional trains. Combine that with decent and frequent buses and metro.