Re:Days of denial are over.
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
Okay, but it would be nice if your hypothesis would come with some falsifiable tests that distinguish it from the prediction of man made global warming - like it is not going to become hotter, wetter etc. and/or the recent increases will revert soon. The man-made global warming hypothesis was put forth in seventies (after the immediate thread of glaciation went out fashion) and its predictions seem to hold brilliantly up to now. Even you donâ(TM)t seem to dispute this.
Exactly *which* of the hundreds of global warming predictions are you referring to? And even global warming proponents are too careful in their science to take a 20 year period as being in the slightest bit meaningful in this issue.
I guess you mean that the earth has warmed in the last 150 years. Yes, I accept that. Of course, the fact that we have been coming out of the little ice age, and are not yet up to the temperatures of even historic past, would tend to indicate that perhaps the climate was warming anyway. There is NO evidence of human effects on global warming. The time series is just too short.
Of course, one could look at the graphs of CO2 levels vs. the warming. Then one would see that a whole lot of the warming took place *before* the bulk of the CO2 was released, and that we had cooling for several decades after that.
As far as falsifiable tests go... would you care to suggest tests for the anthropogenic theories? I haven't seen any yet. The whole problem with global warming policy is that it is based on global warming conjectures, which cannot be falsified any more than they can be proven, because the time scale of data is too small.
So what, a variation in the solar irradiance is current the prime suspect for the medial warming period. This does not change the fact that the vast majority of climate scientist seem to favor the anthropogenic global warming theory.>/i>
I challenge your last sentence. The vast majority of climate scientist favor the hypothesis that the earth has been warming. That is a far cry from them favoring the anthropogenic theory. And also, scientific truth is hardly a majority issue. After all, the vast majority if geologists resisted the continental drift theory for many years, until the evidence became overwhelming.
There already are signification restriction on the use of energy in Europe, Japan and some in the US. In the aftermath of the oil embargo of the seventies, Europe and Japan implemented polices to reduce their fatal dependency on foreign oil imports. As a consequence their use of energy per capita is roughly half of an US citizen. Granted there are many reasons for the latter fact but the lack of a political will to reign in energy consumption is a major component.
Sure is. Another way to put it is that Americans are more dependent on energy because we have much greater distances to travel. And furthermore, we are less dependent on Arab oil than Europeans are, so energy reduction is less important. Finally, as indicated by American's choice of relatively safe SUV's (at much greater cost) over relatively unsafe fuel efficient vehicles, we are more likely to put personal safety ahead of vague predictions by politicians.
Personally I doubt that the US economy would to be doing much worse if its citizenry would be driving smaller more energy efficient cars in stead of gas gosling SUVs. The fuel economy standards are estimated to cost 2000 - 3500 American lives per year directly in reduced auto safety. This estimate is from the National Research Council, a pretty good source. Personally, I think Europeans should feel free to tax their citizens on gasoline, and the citizens should feel free to buy those tiny little gadgets you guys call automobiles. They fit better in your tiny little streets ( a historical artifact).
But see below...
Your last assertion is pure fiction. Europeans were genuinely surprised and upset that the US strongly turned against a treaty that in large part was brain child of the Clinton administration â" however I grand that some of the signing states are secretly gleeful that the whole Kyoto thing fell through.
European citizens may have been surprised, but European governments were not surprised.
However there is a role of the government in imposing restrictions on economic activities when the actual costs are hidden or unknown.
I would argue that such conditions are one of the few cases where government economic intervention is justified.
Your evidence how such a decision would influence a complex system like the World economy twenty years down the road is certainly on much shaggier ground than current climate models. Not hardly - we have a lot more experience watching the response of economies to coercion than we do watching the climate response to trace gas changes. BTW.... the UN IPCC had forecasts of the economic impact of Kyoto, and they were substantial (although later drafts left it out).
Now what about lowering taxes based on a trillion dollars budget surplus prediction? Imo a prototypical example of the voodoo science coming out of conservative think-tanks sponsoring the majority of studies refuting the anthropogenic global warming theory.
I note you fail to address the silliness of Kyoto by itself. That is wise, because the *only* defense of Kyoto is that it would be a first step that would have only symbolic value, but maybe somehow would cause societies to enter into more onerous treaties in the future.
Regarding lowering taxes and budget surplusses... lowering taxes in general is a good idea when they take an unprecedented proportion of the GDP at the same time that defense costs are the lowest in a decade in the world's only superpower. Budget surplus predictions, which BTW came from the left AND the right, are of course almost as difficult as climate predictions. However, I would point out that the left, not conservatives, were very happy to spend that very same surplus... except they spent it on government programs instead of tax reform.
To address the "voodoo science" about conservative think-tanks sponsoring anti-global warming studies... Where do you get that information? Almost all climate science is sponsored by the government. It is true that under the Clinton administration, climatologists were much more likely to get grants for studies likely to confirm global warming than those likely to refute it. But my arguments against global warming hardly come from conservative think tanks, and it is just plain silly to argue so.
If you can't look at the primary information; if you don't understand the difficulties of climate prediction; if you don't understand the folly of making predictions of slow systems based on short term data, then you may have to rely on think tanks to boil the issue down for you. I don't have those handicaps.
Re:On the other hand...
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
Actually, my comments about data quality were primarily aimed at pre-data and paleoclimate, where the data discrepancies or chains of assumptions are the longest. For example, my coral comment is purely aimed at paleoclimate.
The problem with the perturbations in the past is identifying, with good data, the perturbations, and also separating cause from effect. In paleoclimatic data, for example, there are cases of warming coincident with high CO2, but not cases where you can prove that the CO2 caused the warming.
As far as the last comment, you are illustrating your ignorance of the complexity of the system. In a system with no clouds, no plants, no erosion, etc, the simple physics of CO2 heat trapping would dominate all but extraterrestrial effects (i.e. solar irradiance). I don't live in such a simple world. I live in one where there are negative feedbacks and positive feedbacks. Such a system can have hard-to-predict responses to such forcing. For example, with strong negative feedback, the effects of the CO2 may be overwhelmed by natural variability.
Re:Days of denial are over.
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
The real PROBLEM here is the media garbling the messages the climatologists really want to give out
While I agree that this is a problem, the "real problem" is the politicos and environmental activists who have taken this scientific conjecture and treated as cut and dried, and used it to increase the donations to their organizations; and, the leftists who have a remarkable ability to find reasons to increase the power of government.
Without the politicians and the activists, global warming would be an occasional article in a science review area of the popular press, not constant hysterical headlines.
Re:Days of denial are over.
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
After going through a laundry list of possible flaws and weakness in the anthropogenic (cool word b.t.w.) global warming hypothesis you conclude that a competing hypothesis (of course you donâ(TM)t examine any of its weaknesses) must be true.
The influence of irradiance has pretty good evidence behind it. It is not, however, my hypothesis, much less conclusion, that this is responsible for all of the warming. It is simply an example of contrary evidence that has arisen since the global warming hysteria really got going. It merely illustrates that part of the model was wrong (since it didn't take that into account). And I threw it in as one example of the many unknowns that make the anthropogenic global warming theory (I use that word you like so much because to mention global warming without it is incorrect) weak.
It is interesting that you also bring up Kyoto as what a symbol. "A signal..." I can think of less disruptive ways of sending such signals that to impose governmental restrictions on all sorts of energy using activities, without having any significant effect on the supposed problem. I would call that a signal that the parts of the world are willing to do illogical and unfair things in order to send a message. Pretty odd IMHO.
The main thing that the US not signing on does is get the Europeans off the hook, because they knew all along we wouldn't sign on to this. If we did, Europe and the US would hurt economically, while we exported as much CO2 production as possible to the majority of the world where they are exempt from the silly rules.
Of course, another way of looking at Kyoto is as a Trojan horse. Given that 90 or 95% of those in favor of Kyoto have no idea that it is totally ineffectual in reducing global warming, it would be fair to say that this is a way to sneak them into a much more painful regime. Sort of like raising taxes out into the future. It is terribly dishonest.
For all practical purposes, it is like if you die (and disappear) each time you go to sleep, and your complete copy gets reconstructed at the instant you wake up.
This makes a big assumption: that your self is simply a product of the state of the atoms in your body. I think it is not unreasonable, but it is not a certainty.
In this mechanistic age, this assumption is too often taken as an axiom.
Re:oh no... more global warming (...not...??)
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Baked Alaska
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· Score: 2
What I don't understand is why most right-wingers in the USA like to classify issues such as global warming as a left-wing political issue. Is it not possible to be right wing and concerned about the environment?
The reasons are fairly simple. The "left-wing" on average is more closely associated with "protecting the environment," whatever that means. The "right-wing" is skeptical of movements which seek to increase the size of government.
The global warming "issue" only becomes political when attached to suggested government mandated responses. Other than that, it is simply a scientific question.
But, it is has become extremely political. The left is all over the issue, accusing anyone who does not support the expensive but ineffective Kyoto treaty of being an unrestrained capitalist monster. Some on the right (such as Rush Limbaugh) have reacted automatically to assume the science must be wrong if the left supports it (Rush is a good political commentator, but his knowledge of science is inversely proportional to the amount of certainty he has in his opinions about it).
So... look around. You will find significantly more on the "left" who are advocates for global warming "solutions" than you will on the right. And you will find some of those using the same tried-and-true tactics they have used on other issues: moral posturing, distorted information (read The Skeptical Environmentalist for accurately cited examples of the above), fear-mongering and name-calling.
Guess what. I am on the right, and I am a global warming skeptic (I don't think the forecasts are very accurate, and I think the proposed solutions are positively dumb). This is a normal alignment.
In my case, my position stems from a lot of study of the issue, a natural skepticism towards those who think they can predict the future with a crude computer model, a strong skepticism towards those who think they can significantly alter the behavior of billions of people with a treaty or two, and a decades long study of leftist activism and how it distorts issue - in other words, if the left is for it, you can be damned sure I am going to look into it a lot farther than what the popular press emits. Not that I always disagree with the left, but I sure as hell don't trust anything they say in public.
Re:Days of denial are over.
on
Baked Alaska
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· Score: 5, Interesting
First, a note to moderators. The last time I tried an informative post on this topic, it was modded as a troll (although it ended up a 5 troll somehow). This post is an attempt to actually represent the opposing position, with an editorial at the bottom discussing the implications of current politics on this...
anyway... to respond to the previous poster..
You ask why it [the theory of global warming] is wrong. First of all, there is the issue of why it has to be wrong, as opposed to not proven. But let me at least throw some doubt on the science:
1) Much of the data is indeed flawed. It is riddled with assumptions and inconsistencies. It depends on long chains of assumptions. For example, sea temperature data has been inferred from characteristics of coral growth. And yet just in the last month a paper was published (Science) showing that the coral growth is significantly affected by other factors, blowing away that assumption. Tree rings are used as a substitute for temperature or precipitation data, but have been shown to be unreliable in many cases. Other data is significantly contaminated - I am using one such data set right now.
Refusal to accept that mankind CO2 is responsible for all or most of the warming we see is not the same as evolution denial, because the weight of evidence for evolution is enormous and rapidly growing. OTOH, the evidence of the effects of the human produced increase in CO2 is poor. It is based on poor data; good data is over too short a time period to be meaningful in a climate discussion; data may be contaminated by a number of factors (surface station urban heat island effect, for example), and even when known these contaminations are "adjusted" as best as possible.
2) Which "theory" are you referring to when you talk about global warming? As far as I know, the only theories are:
1) CO2 increases cause warming (trivial physics, but not a real hypothesis to test man-made global warming in this complex system).
2) Computer simulations show warming, and with enough tuning can sort-of match the past since temperature records were kept.
The latter is not a theory so much as a numerical computing based on known and unknown physics. However, if the predictions are accurate, who cares if it is a true theory or not? But one needs to understand the nature of climate models to understand the uncertainties. Let me list a few:
Resolution - due to computing limitations, the models have gross resolution, on the order of tens to hundred of kilometers on the surface and hundreds of meters in the atmosphere. Since weather, which is ultimately what is simulated (climate is the long term integral of weather), these problems are significant. The best known weather models in the world today are essentially useless beyond 5 days.
Parameterization - the physics of the atmosphere and the ocean are known very accurately on a small scale. But those physics do not scale well - it is like trying to predict a human from their genes... in theory you could do the simulation of the cells and proteins, etc... but you would never actually do so. Instead, one uses parameters to approximate effects that one does not want to compute. Thus one parameterizes the effect of topography, for example, because the model resolution does not allow actual representation of the details of topography. There are hundreds of the parameterizations.
Selection bias - models which predict the past are naturally selected. But with the large number of parameters, and the sensitivity of the models, it is pretty likely that some will approach an accurate forecast of the past. But that does not make them predictors of the future. To believe otherwise is to imagine that top stock pickers got that way because they can predict the market, when in fact they are just those selected that have a long run of luck!
Missing feedback - The system is unbelievably complex. For example, how does one simulate the response of the earth's biology to climate change, or even to CO2 concentration change? How much does this affect the resulting climate (hint - potentially a whole lot)> There are lots of other complex subsystems that also cannot be modeled.
As far as competing theories, how about changes in solar irradiance? Evidence that this is a significant climate forcer has become undeniable recently. This doesn't mean that the global warming hypothesis is wrong, but it certainly means that it *was* wrong in its mechanisms.
On another vein, modeling relies upon estimates of atmospheric CO2 dynamics and yet we still can't account for about 30% of the CO2 disappearance from the atmosphere. This is a huge uncertainty.
The burden of proof of a theory is on the proposer. Science works by constant refinement of theories, and outright refutation of some.
3)It is not necessary to propose a better theory to disprove, or more importantly, cast doubt upon an existing theory. Science does not require that! One could have refuted Newtonian physics by detecting gravitational lensing, without having any idea what caused the gravitational lensing!
4) Casting doubt on anthropogenic global warming does not make one a nut. True, there are nuts who cast doubt on it. And there are prople who tend to doubt it based on their political leanings, just as there are people who tend to support it based on their own political leanings.
To gather from the hysterical reporting (each event of something warmer is reported as "casting more evidence for global warming" or something stronger), I would suspect there are more of the latter than the former.
A truly scientific viewpoint is that the earth has warmed about a degree in the last 100 or so years, but that the links between that warming and human activity are insufficient to establish a strong cause-and-effect relationship. Thus one should suspect that anthropogenic CO2 may contribute to warming, but not conclude that it does.
Finally, to move on a little bit. Even if we accept that global warming is caused by humans, and that the (ever changing) climate models are providing an accurate forecast, there is a complete lack of critical thinking about what to do about it! For example, recently on here we had a debate about the Kyoto treaty. Few of the debaters realized that the best climate models (that are accepted by the IPCC and the treaty community) show that Kyoto would only retard warming by 6 years in 100 years (or in any year make a difference of a tiny fraction of a degree). And yet most advocates of doing something about global warming jump on the Kyoto bandwagon. Without the (hidden from most of the public) agenda that Kyoto is only the start of significantly more onerous and costly measures, this is completely illogical.
Equally illogical is the resistance of the global warmists (if I can coin a term) to measures that might be taken to ameliorate the negative effects and maximize benefits from the positive effects of the putative warming. This trend illustrates a strong ideological agenda - a strong bias towards forcing solutions upon unwilling mankind without a real cost-benefit analysis.
Finally, what is really illogical is the idea that we, as the people currently on earth, can do much about global warming. We have already seen that the US will not sign onto a basically symbolic (if expensive) measure: Kyoto. We must know that more significant measures will face much stronger resistance. We excuse China and India from Kyoto and yet somehow in the next 100 years imagine that they will not make up for the CO2 emissions reduced by Kyoto.
We have the arrogance (or some do) to believe that we can change the behavior of mankind, against the near and medium term benefit of most, and maintain that change for 100 years. I have seen no evidence that humans are better behaved now than they were 100 years ago, when people were then postulating utopian ideas (before WW-I, WW-II, Soviet Communism, Einstein's theories and the consequences, etc).
Even worse, we have the arrogance to assume that we should punish people today in the blind assumption that those in the future will not come up with technologies that will make the whole issue moot! Amazingly, this is even strong here on this board where most of the participants have been involved in remarkable technological transformation over short periods of time.
That's not to say the steel tariffs are any more healthy for the local industry Stateside. By the way, since when have subsidiaries and tariffs been conservative policies?
They are not conservative policies. Conservatives are not happy with Bush on this issue.
Of course it was. The National Review, unlike, say, the New York Times, is very open about the fact that it is a conservative opinion journal.
Let's see, we have UN slammed repeatedly,
Certainly the UN deserves lots of slamming. It is an organization renowned for its corruption; it is undemocratic, with the Republic of Tonga given the same vote as the U.S. or India or China; it consumes large amounts of money and only rarely accomplishes any good.
open source commie liberal trash berated
Open source is not mentioned. The words do not appear in the aricle.
Bush looked up to for crapping on international treaties..
This is wrong? One of the treaties (ABM) was not international, but bilateral, and was with a party that has not existed for 10 years. The other treaty (Kyoto) is absurd by itself (delaying global warming by 6 years 100 years from now if everything goes according to the plan). So what is wrong with "crapping on these?"
I especially enjoyed the part which equated foreign aid to funding kleptocracies.
Yep. And this is exactly right. Foreign aid has funded way too many corrupt officials. Sometimes it does good, but too often it does not.
Personally I think much of the foreign aid is spent in ways that hurts the recipient nations more than helps them, but.. Hard to come up with something better.
National Review has long argued that foreign aid indeed does harm recipient nations. Originally foreign aid was thought to only be efficient if given to governments themselves for large infrastructure projects. All that did was result in a lot of unneeded (and untested by the market) corrupt infrastructure projects, filling the pockets of corrupt government officials and their cronies, while leaving the nations in greater and greater debt. It was definitely no favor to those countries, but rather a typical failure of central planning.
Harmful aid is worse than no aid at al!
On the subject of space... it is clear form history that in most undertakings, private enterprise is more efficient at making progress. But private enterprise (not to mention human freedom) requires property rights. If space is to be colonized, it's citizens and those who provide the capital for their efforts will require the same sort of guarantees that work on earth: human rights including property rights; democracy; transparent system of law enforcement.
A comment...
The magnetic interference will be the same regardless of the size of the wire (within limits). So larger wire has no effect on that interference.
As far as supplying power to the speakers, you simply need wire large enough to carry the peak currents, and low enough resistance that the impedance (hopefully resistive) of the speaker is quite low compared to the resistance of the wire. However, even if this is not the case, you do not increae the distortion (as long as the amplifier is not mismatched), but rather simply reduce some of the power available to the speaker which does not produce distortion, but rather produces simply slightly less power. Everything else you say about speakers is simply irrelevant.
Thus if you are running, say, 1000 watts RMS (enough to break your ears easily), and the speakers are 4 ohm impedance, you have an average current of 16 amperes. This current is easily carried by normal house wiring for a hundred feet! So no problem with the wire melting.
Now, to make sure you don't loose a significant amount of power to resistive heating in the wire, let's say that you are willing to sacrifice only 1/10th then you need the resistance of the wire to be less than 1/10th the equivalent resistance of the amplifier - i.e. you need it to be less that.4 ohm. If your wire is 20 feet long, then it can be as small as 19 gauge (convenient, since you need 18 gauge wire to carry 16 amps without getting too hot). So by this analysis, 18 gauge (smaller than "zip" cord - extension cord - wire).
Another reason that you failed to mention is the impedance of the wire. If the wire is not purely resistive, it will cause a rolloff with frequency - the pwr to the speakers will decline with frequency. Here is a table showing the rolloff at 30KHz for a 20 foot cable of varying widths:
Finally! An effect that we can measure of small wire. But note: with a wire 3 inches (!) in diameter, you have almost as significant rolloff as you do with a wire of.04 inches in diameter. Not a major effect, in other words.
But... if you really care about the difference in rolloff between 1.8dB and 2.9dB, you are much better off with 10" WIDE cable than big fat cables.
Of course, a much simpler and perfectly adequate approach to this is to use an equalizer (very simple in this case) to compensate for the inductive rolloff.
Errr.... harmonics at clipping are all fun and that, but only if you have one sine wave in your amplifier. With real music, you have lots of signal in there. Then, any kind of nonlinearity, whether tube or solid state, will produce intermodulation which consists of sum and difference frequencies. Intermod is infinitely annoying and the real problem with distortion in amplifiers.
The math of this is simple - and applies to RF as well as AF. Take two of the signals in the systemm and approximate them for as sin waves. The nonlinearity can be modeled as a power series, so you have terms of the form:
f(a,b) = A*(a + b) + B*(a + b)^2 + C*(a + b)^3...
Substitute
a=sin(w1*t+phi)
b=sin(w2*t)
And do the trig and you can see that you end up with all sorts of neat frequencies such as
w1-w2, 2*w1-w2, etc.
Now, instead of f(a,b), imagine f(a,b,c,d,e,f,g...)_ and you can see the mess that intermodulation makes. It basically mixes (in the frequency domain) all of the signals AND all of their harmonics in all possible combinations!
Tube amplifiers *do* sound different because their distortion curves are different than solid state amps. Why audio "purists" prefer one distortion curve to another is what I don't understand. What I want is minimal distortion overall!
But then, audiophiles also buy gigantic cables because they imagine that their speakers will sound better attached to them... etc.
Technical note: The coefficients on the various terms of the power series tend to go down with the order of the term. And, some configurations approximately cancel out all odd or even terms.
I'm not sure where the "safe" comes into it as the larger-is-safer issue is a relative one (ie if everyone drove minis, someone in a Ford Escort would be as safe as a person in a Town Car in a place where everyone drives Escorts.), but you can buy cars that are "bigger and better" than they were ten, twenty, years ago.
This is a common misunderstanding, based simply on the idea of momentum conservation in a head-on collision. Big cars are inherently safer - even if they collide with each other. Put another way, they are safer in a collision with a stationary boundary, they are safer in a side collision. An important ratio is that of the mass of the car to that of its occupants. This is in addition to the ratio of the mass of the car to the mass of what it collides with (conservation of momentum).
As to your argument about CAFE and SUV's, you just don't understand at all. Without CAFE, there would be much more choice in big cars. There would more choice... period. Certainly some people buy SUV's for other reasons (I originally bought SUV's to go to otherwise inaccessible places), but CAFE standards have a major impact.
If you don't believe me, read what the trade press has to say about it. Americans didn't make light trucks over 50% of total new car sales just out of wierdness!
The American media is biased against Israel ? You must be having a laugh. Even a cursory glance at the reporting from the US networks compared to teh rest of the world's media will show a huge pro-Israel bias, to the extend that many stories that run elsewhere that may result in Israel being seen in a negative light are simply not run in the US media.
You do not use a reasonable benchmark. Bias is not measured against other media reporting.. it can only be measured against objective reality.
I make my own judgements on media. I also know the attitudes of american media. Even though there are a disproportionate number of Jewish people in and owning the media, it still has had an anti-Israel bias - especially since the start of the first Intifada. The reason is that the media has a marxist bias (by that I don't mean that the media is marxist, but that it leans in that direction). And the American take on Marxism is to reflexively support the oppressed. And the Palestinians are oppressed. So the American media tends to support them.
It is only since the foolish use of suicide bombers that the American media has started a more favorable showing of Israel. This is because Americans can identify with innocent civilians who look like them, think much like them and live much like them who are mercilessly killed and maimed. Of course, the events of 9/11 amplify that psychological bond.
Even our media can identify with these victims. Thus the Palestinians have made the error of turning their enemy into a victim, even more appealing to our media's bias towards any victims than the Palestinians themselves. And of course, the events of 9/11 amplify that psychological bond.
Thus today the American media reports much more of the terrorism than it did before the use of these tactics. The Palestinians have made a terrible mistake, not to mention having committed acts of extreme moral repugnance, by their use of these tactics. They have lost most of the American media's natural bias towards them.
BTW, I also read the Arab and Israeli media and find that the Arab media is by far the most biased. The Israeli media available on the web ranges from right wing to left wing, and get quite a diversity of reporting from there.
What this has to do with global warming... I don't know. But I am simply responding.
First... a meta-comment. Thanks for the tone of your post. I just responded to one that was quite disrespectful (of course I responded in kind). Yours is a breath of fresh air.
... to the issues...
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
It is, but government often does stupid things. This is one of the reasons for American distrust of government (which you asked about elsewhere). It was, of course, a political compromise, which is what democracies do.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
I agree. I have read the statistics in the past. I don't have anything current. As of the time I read it, the European rate was quite high. Actually a death rate per mile/km would be more meaningful than per capita.
However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that...
Yes, it is much more the case because so much of our country was developed more recently, and because we have so much land. The reason for the SUV is simply size and safety. And again, I think there would be a lot fewer of them if we didn't have the silly CAFE rules.
Oddly enough, SUV's are also a status symbol. Why, I don't know. I guess for the same reason that many urban Americans who have never been close to a live bovine wear cowboy boots and dress. Sort of odd. I own SUV's strictly for safety and comfort, and also at because I sometimes go into country where I truly need a powerful vehicle with four wheel drive. I live in Arizona and we have plenty of wilderness left.
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed...:-)
True enough. The difference is that our own media is mostly Europhile and continuously agrees with you guys.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
It is because of our dependence on automobile transport, which is where the majority of the reductions would come. You guys are already paying the high taxes on gas and the high taxes for train systems, etc. We are not, but would have to. So the delta is large for us, but not for you.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
Ah, here we get to the heart of the matter. Here are some issues to ponder:
You state the problem as absolute: prevent destroying the environment. But rarely are problems that simple, and this one is as complex as they get. Is there a reason to preserve the environment that we have at this moment? It may be that a warmer environment is better! Environmentalism almost always tries to freeze the environment in time, which itself is unnatural! So for a start, one must carefully quetion the goals.
Also, once must recognize that all human actions, including the lack of actions, have consequences. And actions on a global scale may have huge consequences. And we cannot accurately predict what those might be. I will give you a not far fetched example: The economic dislocations resulting from enough reductions to actually make a difference (as opposed to Kyoto, which by itself makes no relevant difference) might cause major political shifts. Perhaps India turns into a nuclear dictatorship as its people react to deprivation, and a global war starts. This isn't likely, but it is an example of second order effects that are possible.
These are effects in the human system, which are even harder to predict than the climate itself! Thus my version of the precuationary principle is to avoid such major changes without a good idea of the harm they may cause!
Any forced change will, of course, cost resources - at least in the short term (in spite of arguments against this).The resources spent on emissions reduction might be much better spent on other things. For example, perhaps we could raise some countries from poverty to that critical level of GDP at which the birth rate drops and the populace can afford to consider environmental concerns. Or, we could provide quality water to the billions who don't have it (Lundborg's argument). In other words, one must examine all the alternatives.
Long term climatology would indicate that we are in danger of an ice age. Anthropogenic global warming may be necessary to avert this. Far fetched? There is better evidence for this long term trend, by far, than there is that mankind's increase in CO2 has caused any warming so far! I admit that this is still a long shot, but it is an example of possible unintended consequences.
My objection to Kyoto is that it can only be one of two things:
A facade (supporters would say "framework") to prepare us for much more onerous reductions in the future, --or--
An expensive but ineffective step (a 6 year delay in global warming over 100 years is clearly not worth any significant effort, and is also to close to the noise level).
Overall, I do not object to emissions reductions. I object to doing it in a dumb way. For example, in the US we have not built any nuclear power plants since 1979, due to illogical and hysterical reactions fired by environmental extremists. And yet nuclear power is by far the cleanest large scale power source available - i.e. the only one that can make a major difference. The other "power source" that is significant is conservation, but the US has already taken major steps in this direction, with little effect at all! It seems that the more efficient we make things, the more we use them!
An ideal solution would be a hydrogen powered transportation system. Unfortunately, this would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment, just for the US. Furthermore, hydrogen power is far less energy efficient than gasoline (hence my desire for nuclear plants - to produce the electricity necessary to prepare the hydrogen). It may be that over time, we are able to evolve in this direction.
What I will fight is anything that compromises the safety of myself and others so that the people in 2100 can wait until 2106 to get the same amount of global warming. And I will also object to schemes which are likely to result in vast deaths in the third world due to economic losses resulting form those schemes. I would rather see a few degrees of temperature rise (and related sea level rise) if those people can be brought into the second or first world! And that is one of the possible tradeoffs - in spite of the Kyoto attempts to adjust the balance.
First... a meta-comment. Thanks for the tone of your post. I just responded to one that was quite disrespectful (of course I responded in kind). Yours is a breath of fresh air.
... to the issues...
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
It is, but government often does stupid things. This is one of the reasons for American distrust of government (which you asked about elsewhere). It was, of course, a political compromise, which is what democracies do.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
I agree. I have read the statistics in the past. I don't have anything current. As of the time I read it, the European rate was quite high. Actually a death rate per mile/km would be more meaningful than per capita.
However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that...
Yes, it is much more the case because so much of our country was developed more recently, and because we have so much land. The reason for the SUV is simply size and safety. And again, I think there would be a lot fewer of them if we didn't have the silly CAFE rules.
Oddly enough, SUV's are also a status symbol. Why, I don't know. I guess for the same reason that many urban Americans who have never been close to a live bovine wear cowboy boots and dress. Sort of odd. I own SUV's strictly for safety and comfort, and also at because I sometimes go into country where I truly need a powerful vehicle with four wheel drive. I live in Arizona and we have plenty of wilderness left.
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed...:-)
True enough. The difference is that our own media is mostly Europhile and continuously agrees with you guys.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
It is because of our dependence on automobile transport, which is where the majority of the reductions would come. You guys are already paying the high taxes on gas and the high taxes for train systems, etc. We are not, but would have to. So the delta is large for us, but not for you.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
Ah, here we get to the heart of the matter. Here are some issues to ponder:
You state the problem as absolute: prevent destroying the environment. But rarely are problems that simple, and this one is as complex as they get. Is there a reason to preserve the environment that we have at this moment? It may be that a warmer environment is better! Environmentalism almost always tries to freeze the environment in time, which itself is unnatural! So for a start, one must carefully quetion the goals.
Also, once must recognize that all human actions, including the lack of actions, have consequences. And actions on a global scale may have huge consequences. And we cannot accurately predict what those might be. I will give you a not far fetched example: The economic dislocations resulting from enough reductions to actually make a difference (as opposed to Kyoto, which by itself makes no relevant difference) might cause major political shifts. Perhaps India turns into a nuclear dictatorship as its people react to deprivation, and a regional war starts. This isn't likely, but it is an example of second order effects that are possible. These are effects in the human system, which are even harder to predict than the climate itself! Thus my version of the precuationary principle is to avoid such major changes without a good idea of the harm they may cause!
Any forced change will, of course, cost resources - at least in the short term (in spite of arguments against this).The resources spent on emissions reduction might be much better spent on other things. For example, perhaps we could raise some countries from poverty to that critical level of GDP at which the birth rate drops and the populace can afford to consider environmental concerns. Or, we could provide quality water to the billions who don't have it (Lundsborg's argument). In other words, one must examine all the alternatives.
Long term climatology would indicate that we are in danger of an ice age. Anthropogenic global warming may be necessary to avert this. Far fetched? There is better evidence for this long term trend, by far, than there is that mankind's increase in CO2 has caused any warming so far! I admit that this is still a long shot, but it is an example of possible unintended consequences.
My objection to Kyoto is that it can only be one of two things:
A facade to prepare us for much more onerous reductions in the future, --or--
An expensive but ineffective step (a 6 year delay in global warming over 100 years is clearly not worth any significant effort, and is also to close to the noise level).
Overall, I do not object to emissions reductions. I object to doing it in a dumb way. For example, in the US we have not built any nuclear power plants since 1979, due to illogical and hysterical reactions fired by environmental extremists. And yet nuclear power is by far the cleanest large scale power source available - i.e. the only one that can make a major difference. The other "power source" that is significant is conservation, but the US has already taken major steps in this direction, with little effect at all! It seems that the more efficient we make things, the more we use them!
An ideal solution would be a hydrogen powered transportation system. Unfortunately, this would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment, just for the US. Furthermore, hydrogen power is far less energy efficient than gasoline (hence my desire for nuclear plants - to produce the electricity necessary to prepare the hydrogen). It may be that over time, we are able to evolve in this direction.
What I will fight is anything that compromises the safety of myself and others so that the people in 2100 can wait until 2106 to get the same amount of global warming. And I will also object to schemes which are likely to result in vast deaths in the third world due to economic losses resulting form those schemes. I would rather see a few degrees of temperature rise (and related sea level rise) if those people can be brought into the second or first world! And that is one of the possible tradeoffs - in spite of the Kyoto attempts to adjust the balance.
One of the insults was the assertion that the post was "nationalist." Damned right. I believe, and can back up with an argument that doesn't belong in this discussion, that the US is a better nation than any European nation that I know (Britain being a close second) and am not afraid or ashamed to argue that. I realize that Europeans believe that nationalism is out of date and that extra-national bodies and procedures and agreements are the future of man (this is relevant - see 3 examples in point 1 below). I believe this view itself is dangerous and neglects history and the unfortunate nature of man.
1. The fact that the USA has withdrawn from so many international activities (climate change, international criminal court, land mines) has resulted in it being subject to criticism....misinterpretation of myargument deleted.... To suggest that these initiatives were deliberately developed to embarrass the USA is completely delusional.
Yes, it would be. Of course, those initiatives were not deliberately developed to embarrass the us, and of course I never suggested that.
I did suggest that there was an economic incentive for Europe to try to get the US into the Kyoto treaty, and there is. And if you believe that your governments are operating solely for the good of man and are not affected by such considerations, you are delusional.
I would also argue that such initiatives are partly due to European discomfort at no longer being the most powerful nations on earth, and in fact are partly an attempt to counter the power of the US, which they feel is dangerous and wrongly yielded, whether in environmental policy or the war on terrorism.
It is also true, that I, like many Americans, believe that all the three initiatives you mention above are foolish and dangerous.
As far as criticism from Europe, we hear it constantly, although mostly in regard to foreign policy. We constantly hear (through our Europhile new media) that we are "cowboys" while Europeans or "more sophisticated" or "more subtle." That criticism, as silly as it is, naturally biases us to be a bit less receptive to other European criticism. If you detect some anti-European ranting here, it is because this is an opportunity to respond to some of the anti-American whining constantly coming from Europe.
Europe will continue to make a number of changes in its economy to keep to the protocol. Whether you view this as changing or not changing its behaviour is irrelevant.
Yes, it is. Why do you bring it up?
Your confident assurance that "Brussells" bureaucrats are not democratically elected will come as something of a surprise to the European Parliament [eu.int] responsible enforcing the Kyoto protocol. Or is democracy outside the US of A not democracy by definition?
Actually, you are right. Sorry about that. I had out-of-date information.
4. I'm at a loss as to how to respond to this bit of incoherent blather. It appears to be a recitation of the first point, with a dig at evil US environmentalists thrown in for good measure. Presumably they are also making 'meaningless gestures to enhance their moral standing over the US'?
Perhaps English is not your native language. Or perhaps you casually throw around terms like "incoherent blather" just for the fun of it. The fact that you cannot understand coherent English is, of course, a possibility. To spell it out in detail for you, Point 4 shows that contrary to what the previous poster represented, it is in fact possible that the US will sign Kyoto. It also points out why. I am sorry that the injection of my personal opinion into this point made it impossible for you to understand the factual information contained therein.
What would be more interesting would be for you to actually debate the issue of global warming, instead of picking at a reply to a reply to a reply.
...okay... moderate me down for this. I should have left the post alone to get moderated into oblivion, but hey... sometimes its fun to respond to a truly clueless opponent, especially one who can't even spell (not that mein is prefect:-). Maybe instead you can moderate this to funny. I find it tragically amusing.
US is not some flawless country, as it appears to be in your eyes.
Nothing like starting out with an incorrect and ad hominem assertion about your oponent. At least my ad hominem assertion is correct!
But anyway, to the point. You argue that we drive SUV's because we have the freedom to do so.
WRONG. I argue that we drive SUV's because we cannot buy large, safe cars instead.
...baseless assertions about my argument deleted...
Next you argue that we are limiting our options, well considering that polution does change the atmosphere composition and thusly must at least trivially change the climate, it is logical to assume that a solution that requires more man-hours to impliment but dosen't change the atmosphere composition and also advances research in alternate fuel devices, instead of stagnating on fossel fules would be a prefered solution.
In addition to be grammatically incorrect, the above is utterly illogical. It implicitly gives an infinite cost to altering atmospheric composition in regard to all other alternatives.
You argue that researching alternate fuel technology will destroy economies.
I did? Gee... care to put in a quote?
Unfortunatly you don't understand economics it seems, because if 1: there is a demand for a product, and 2: there are people to produce the product then 3: you have a working economy. No matter what form of energy you have, an economy will sprout up around it, because thats the way capitalism works.
Speaking of not understanding economics... the above statement stands on its own! Economics is not about the existence or non-existence of an economy. It's a little more complicated than that!
Following the logic that capitalism always finds the best solution, with no regulation is falwed, it's a fairly trivial argument to state that it would be benifical to hunt wales to extinction in order to aquire thier oil, when cheaper solutions exist. This is what pure unregulated capitalism causes, and obviously it is not the prefered solution.
You mean to hunt whales... to acquire their oil? Anyway... who are you arguing with? I didn't assert that capitalism always finds the best solution. And my argument is not falwed, whatever that means.
You state the law of unintended consequences (the what?) as the reason SUV's are popular.
Hey, you got one right, for a change!
You state that this obviously makes all envirmental action 'stupid' and 'limiting your freedom'.
I did?
Unfortunatly, the only thing that can limit our freedom, is censorship,
Oh, so the only freedom you value is the freedom to bloviate? Some of us value other freedoms.
I'm not going to debate this point farther, but if you provide a real rebutal, I'll argue it.
If I knew what a rebutal was, I'd try to provide it. Or perhaps you meant rebuttal?
Asking people to avoid being need-lessly wastefull is not adverting freedom, nor is it stupid.
I would agree that it is not "adverting" freedom, whatever that means. But governments don't ask, they tell.
I'd like to modify a quote at this point "Your right to freedom stops at my grandchildrens grandchildrens grandchildrens enviromental wellfare",
Oh, so you are so farsighted that you know which of my actions are good for your descendant's welfare?
You claim your more productive than the rest of the world, really? I'd like to see that backed up.
Yes. Go look up world productivity statistics.
I go to work every day at a corperate situation,
My sympathies. I work for a corporation, but I don't go to work every day.
and make sure my network and applications work, is this more productive than the same job in brittan, how?
Weren't you the one asserting that I have no understanding of economics? Get a clue dude... efficiency can be measured, but not by looking at just your own job!
I find it hard to believe we are the most prodicutive country in the world, I know alot of people who don't do anything productive at all. A great deal of our money is in the servicing of people, to make thier lives easier, not in the production of any tangeable good.
So obviously your personal acquaintances are more convincing than real statistics. Why am I not surprised...
And to believe that servicing people is not productive is rather ancient thinking... say 19th century, don't you think?
I'd like to close with, have you ever been overseas?
Yeah, dude. Many times. I've been to Europe, I've been to Korea, Japan, what was called then South Vietnam, and many other places. I've been to communist East Germany and just barely post-Communist Czeckoslovakia. I've been to Latin America and various other countries. I've lived in France and worked in Britain. So much for your assumptions.
However, as far as I know I have never been to brittan!
and it is ludacrist
Uh... is ludacrist a religious figure or a new rock group? Just asking, you understand.
Honestly, I don't really get that CAFE law argument. Why are you forced to buy SUVs, because manufacturers have to make their cars more efficient?
As I explained. If Americans are to buy safe cars that are large enough to hold a couple of people and the results of a weekly shopping trip, they need a relatively large car. Because of CAFE, the auto manufacturers do not make many large cars, and they charge a lot for them, because of the poor mileage of CAFE. But SUV's are exempt from CAFE, which is why Americans buy them.
Yes, against other SUVs. I don't buy this safety argument. And of course if you add pedestrians and cyclists to the calculation, the safety record may look differently.
Against other vehicles period. It is not only the relative mass of head-on vehicles that count, but also the relative mass of the vehicle vs. the person inside of it. And then there are side collisions, and collisions with stationary objects, of course. The National Academy of Sciences, not exactly a biased group, has estimated that somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand Americans die every year due to CAFE.
You know... We have shopping outlets too. I agree, that they're much more integrated in the American culture. But anyway: The connection "Big shopping center" --> "Need for SUV" is totally bogus in my eyes.
When I lived in Paris, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block. I didn't need to make a shopping trip. Americans, OTOH, need to go miles typically just to buy groceries. So naturally, they want to combine multiple trips into one, and that means they need to carry more. They don't need an SUV to do it, but a euro-midget car just is too small.
ROTFL!! You're not serious with that one, are you? Americans need bigger cars, because they're taller?
Because they are on average tall, and because they drive much longer distances. It is the combination.
Oh, and talking about "provincial viewpoints". Americans don't exactly have a great track record in having viewpoints other than their owns (i.e. considering out-of-america stuff...).
I know. I just put that one in their to tangle your tail:-) Americans in fact are pretty provincial. What Europeans tend to be is "superior" in that Americans are constantly getting lectured by you guys (at least in the media). So occasionally we feel like teasing back.
Inefficient retail systems??? Anyway, they don't want you to do any of this. What they want you to do, is to be more aware about gas usage. That was the whole point I was trying to make. In my experience many Americans just don't REALLY care how much gas their car uses. Well, it's cheap, so why should they? I was just saying, that the awareness for these kind of things is a lot higher in Europe than in the US.
I think Americans are more skeptical of environmentalist claims than Europeans are, and are (IMHO properly) much more skeptical of government intervention. But we to say that americans care less about the environment would be wrong. We care a lot about it - after all, we have a lot more of it:-)
I would argue that Europeans have the luxury of worrying about such things because it doesn't cost them much personally to do so. It costs us more to do something about it, so we do less. I don't think it is a matter of inherent superiority of attitude... it is more the matter of human nature. But... I also would argue that the Europeans are much more likely to approve of government regulating their lives and in general interfering more in their economy. Where this trust comes from, I don't know, given the apalling behaviour of many European governments in the first fifty years of this century.
Finally, I would agree with the Europeans on government intervention (and disagree with many free-market americans) in one way: pollution problems cannot be solved without the intervention of government, because the costs are not felt by the polluter and thus market mechanisms are not sufficient. The difference is that I have far less faith in governments to make correct interventions than Europeans seem to have. And in the case of global warming, a good argument can be made that no action other than research is appropriate at this time. The uncertainties are too high as I have mentioned in previous posts. The most important difficulties are not scientific, but rather human: getting the whole world to adopt a policy like Kyoto and keeping it in force for 100 years, in order to delay global warming for 6 years, is just not a reasonable expectation!
Oh, I see. So anti-semitism is okay "if you know the facts?"
How pathetic.
BTW... Americans have a pretty good grasp of the facts in that conflict, and we get both sides of the story also. In fact, most of our major media is biased against Israel, and has been for at least a decade. The American left, which strongly influences our mass media, always sides with the "struggle against oppression," or what it views as such, regardless of facts.
The United States could not have an efficient public transportation infrastructure without destroying 90% of our housing stock and rebuilding it as high density. Obviously we are not going to do that. Certainly the environmentalists consistently ignore that, with the result that we have expended huge sums on urban subways, light rail, etc, without any impact on automobile usage.
Having used European mass transit extensively, I think I am in a position to argue that it would not work well for Americans. The biggest reasons are our very low population density, and our highly concentrated (and efficient) retail distribution, which means that people need to be able to bring back a significant amount of goods per trip when they shop, because they have to go a significant distance to do so. In Europe, one is much more likely to have a short distance to go to a store, because they are not efficiently concentrated.
As far as reducing reliance on oil, the best way to do that is nuclear power, which is consistently blocked by environmentalists. We have not had a new nuclear plant started since 1979!
Many americans drive mid-sized cars. Hybrids are microscopic, they are kludges (extra parts). Many American drive small cars. However, unlike Europe, we seem to have more of a belief that freedom is a virtue, not a sin.
A more rational response to global warming
on
EU Ratifies Kyoto Treaty
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· Score: 3, Interesting
As has been pointed out on/., Kyoto by itself is an irrational response to global warming. The simple fact that it only delays warming by 6 years in 100 years shows that.
While science is far from proving that the current warming is caused by mankind, let us assume that in fact the hypothesis is correct. CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere, especially compared to the greenhouse gas called water vapor, but the actions of man have indeed caused CO2 to increase by over 30% in the last 150 years. So... assuming this increase will cause further warming, what should we do about it?
Kyoto attempts to simply reduce the warming. Environmental advocates also advocate a simple (if terribly expensive) strategy of stopping the warming and maintaining the status quo.
However, actually stopping the increase in CO2 is impossible without a massive reduction in population (i.e. a massive human catastrophe or global war). It won't happen for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the resistance of people, especally in developing countries, to the measures necessary to do so.
A more rational approach follows the following principles and facts:
We cannot stop the increase in CO2.
Any significant change in major systems such as transportation will be very expensive.
People who are economically well off can and do protect the environment better than poor people are able to. At the extremes, worldwide economic downturns cause massive deaths among the poorest in the world. Also, and not coincidentally, birth rate is high until a certain minimum economic threshold is reached.
In historic times, the earth and mankind have gone through significant periods of global warming and cooling.
The abilities of governments and treaties to limit human activity is limited, and the ability to extend that control into the future in a predictable manner is even more limited.
The most rational approach is to accept that global warming is inevitable (if we believe any predictions at all from the imperfect science).
We should:
Use whatever means we can to improve the standard of living of the third world. The most important factors in this are democracy, lack of corruption, transparency of government, and an enforceable system of property rights. Without these, economic progress inevitably stalls (as the Chinese will soon find out). We should use our best efforts to further these minimum requirements for significant economic growth. We should also recognize that these factors also provide the basis for a stable system that will be able to deal with environmental issues.
Remove illogical impediments to energy efficiency. In the US this means removing obstacles to the development of nuclear power generation. In spite of the arguments of such provably wrong fools as Amory Lovins, centralized nuclear power is the most efficient way known to produce energy. Other methods such as photovoltaic, wind energy, biomass, cogeneration, etc have absorbed huge amounts of research dollars and yet are only marginal in contributing to the problem.
Continue to fund climatological research.
Try to determine the real costs or benefits of predicted global warming as a basis for decision making. These should be economic costs only.
Don't act hastily. Global warming is a long term trend. Unforseen changes in technology are likely to defeat most predictions. Likewise, global political, economic and health changes are very hard to predict. Imagine that it is 1902 and we are trying to predict the future. Could we predict fasicm, the world wars, the rise of the communist block, telecommunications and computers, nuclear power, the rapid rise of life expectancy, the rapid drop of population growth in developed countries, etc? Why do we think that we won't see similar upheavals in the next century? This perspective should show how foolish it is to attempt to make century long global plans!
Resist the pressures to take drastic governmental action (such as Kyoto). Recognize that governmental actions are governed by the Law of Unintended Consequences and Laws of Bureaucracy. A simple example is how the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law has caused over half of all new cars sold in the US to be SUV's and other light trucks!
Investigate relatively no-coercive measures whereby governments can help in the creation of long term financial derivative markets that can be used to both hedge against global warming and to properly allocate the externalities costs of CO2 emission. It is important to realize that the latter is extremely difficult, can be extremely coercive,m and is subject to strong pressures from special interest groups, and thus may not be worth doing.
You assert that Europe isn't pushing the protocol due to a desire to hobble the US. While that is not the only motive, it is definitely one motive.
Oh, and people care about the environment here in the US also. But we also care about freedom, and we would like our environmental sacrifices to be meaninful and likely to produce success.
Regarding smaller cars, your motives are fine. But you are you, and are not representative of all Europeans. Of course some people drive smaller cars out of environmental reasons (and they do in the US also). But there are other reasons (narrow streets in old European towns for example). You cannot deny that economics has a significant effect on the choices people make, however.
You ask about SUV's. I own two - one made by the Japanese (Toyota). I can tell you exactly why Americans drive SUV's - safety and comfort.
You ask... why SUV's?
Because of environmentalist-pushed regulations!
"WHAT?" You say.
Environmentalists pushed the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law. This requires manufacturers to have an ever rising average fuel economy in the fleet of cars that they sell. However, light trucks were exempted, and SUV's are light trucks.
Thus, Americans who desired larger and safer automobiles were forced by the environmentalist regulations to buy SUV's!
Environmentalists, and statist in general who try to use the coercive force of government to alter individual behavior too often ignore The Law of Unintended Consequences, as this shows so well.
Of course, a reasonable question at this point is why Americans want larger cars. I have already mentioned safety. The National Academy of Science estimates that several thousand American lives are lost each year due to smaller cars resulting from CAFE. Americans understand this instinctively and they know that larger cars are safer (and they are).
Okay... but beyond safety, there is another reason that Americans want large cars. One of America's greatest innovations, and a significant reason for our very high standard of living, is our innovations in the consumer distribution network. In this case, supermarkets, large department stores (now almost obsolete), shopping malls, and large discount outlets (Walmart, Costco) have greatly reduced the cost of distribution to consumers by eliminating middlement and bringing wholesale prices to the final buyer. A side effect of this is that consumer goods are concentrated in central points, and these central points are a significant distance from where most people live. In comparison, in European cities (and older US cities), one can walk to the grocery store, the bakery, etc. But Americans, if they want to be efficient in their shopping (and coincidentally fuel efficient) need larger cars just to carry home the results of the shopping trips. This is also why mass transit is a loser of an idea in the US.
Another reason for larger cars is the fact that the US is a very big country. I just returned from an 8000 mile driving trip (hunting tornados). And yet I only touched a small part of the US. Just driving across Texas is equivalent to driving the length of Europe! And when you must drive long distances, comfort is important! Most foreign cars and even US CAFE limited cars are too small for a significant percentage of Americans (who on average are fairly tall) to drive long distances in.
Now, Europeans, with their provincial viewpoint don't realize most of these factors. They want us to follow the same rules that they, with their high population densities and inefficient retail systems must follow.
I will post another direct reply to the main article on what I consider to be a rational response to global warming.
I love the bit about the road deaths, and the vision of oppressive governments forcing people into tiny cars.
But its true. The gasoline taxes in Europe are extortionate. The fact that some European small cars are fun to drive does not negate the facts that Europe has a much higher percentage of people driving tiny cars with high mileage than the US - people make rational choices and it is rational to trade off some amount of safety for some amount of freedom as represented by the increased mileage of the tiny cars (although most environmentalists will deny us that freedom in any other areas). However, that choice is significantly dictated by the governments which set standards including the cost of gasoline.
Don't forget that big Mercedes and BMW's are also very popular exports to the US. And there is nothing like driving on the Autobahn and seeing the big European owned, gas guzzling Mercy's and Beamers zipping by at >200 kph. Of course, only those rich enough to afford them and the gas can drive them in Europe. In the more democratic US, our gas taxes are low enough that almost anyone can have a big car and drive it fast, if that is their choice.
In matters relevant to Kyoto, the "its hopeless so why bother" is not the US argument at all. But you imply that the Kyoto treaty is rational, when in fact it is not. Yes, now that the absurdities of the treaties have been shown, environmentalists are at last admitting that it is only the first step. Steps that would really make a difference (assuming that the science and other projections are correct) are obviously even more onerous, or they would have been put into the treaty in the first place!
The US is only the worlds biggest polluter if you consider CO2 to be pollution (not a totally unreasonable assumption). But we are not nearly the largest polluter relative to our productivity, which is a more rational measure. Every time somebody in the world uses a US product (including information/service products) they are benefiting from that pollution, but it does not get credited to us. Your use of internet technology and PC technology was directly subsidized by the pollution produced by our technologists!
Furthermore, Kyoto ignores China and India. If the US faces onerous charges for pollution, we will export much of our pollution to those countries, which are not required to reduce theirs. Net result: more pollution, since they are less efficient due to less capital available for technology.
What is fair in your mind is massive sacrifies by the US compared to Europe, and no sacrifices by rapidly growing, non-democratic countries such as China. This is fair?
Also, you ignore the points I made originally. Kyoto is based on global warming science. But that science is not in very good shape. Ignored is the fact that it has yet to come close to proving that the recent warming is anthropogenic, although I will grant that it possibly is. But more important is the highly bureaucratic assumption that somehow the magic signing of such a treaty will actually compel the world's population, for the next 100 years, to change their behavior even when it is against their best interests! In other words, it imagines that people will willingly suffer the degradation of their economies based on these treaties, and will continue to do so in the next 100 years.
Tell me, it were 1902 and you had the same science, would you be so confident in the treaty?
There were a few surpises during the subsequent 100 years that would have made the treaty meaningless: World Wars I and II, the rise of fascism, the rise of communism (the worst environmental disasters occurred in the USSR and Eastern Europe - I saw many of these myself in 1991), the development of the automobile, aviation, electronics, telecommunications, nuclear energy, etc.
Of course, you will say, it is part of a framework. This hardly inspires confidence.
The general increase in faith in the power of bureaucratic entities and international organizations seems inversely proportional to the ability of the faithful to enforce that power.
Finally, once again, you are pointing out what is the biggest problem with Kyoto.
Kyoto does nothing significant for the environment without further measures anticipated by its framework. Which leads one to the question of:
Why should we sign on to it, which clearly requires causes us more economic damage than the rest of the world, when even its proponents admit it won't do any good except to further the procedural path?"
Europe has recently engaged in many meaningless gestures in order to enhance its "moral" standing over the US. Europe has yet to understand that it is no longer the center of world affairs. It has no military worth discussing, and no will to create one. It has a living standard 2/3rds that of the US. It has a demographic problem that is causing its population to rapidly age and diminish relative to most of the rest of the world.
Furthermore, Europe has been losing other moral edges it had over the US. For example, the violent crime rate in Britain and France is now significantly higher than that in the US. The recent anti-semitism should be a source of great shame in Europe, but the rapidly rising percentage of muslims in France and England (see demographics above - the muslims are having more children) has muted the reaction to this.
Due to all of these factors, Europe is humiliated, and is reacting by attacking the United States wherever it can in the realm of ideology and international affairs.
Europe will not change its behavior as a result of the signing, so it is a no-cost effort.
The EU is a bureaucracy, not a democracy. The Brussells bureaucrats are far removed from the votes of individuals in Europe, and acts on its own. Bureaucracies have significant intertia and often do irrational things just because they appeared rational when the process was started (see Laws of Bureaucracy).
It is not clear that the US will never sign the treaty. We have had previous fits of insanity, and as long as the treaty is out there, it could be signed in the future if we ended up with a sufficiently foolish senate. Furthermore, European signing of the treaty makes it easier for US environmental organizations to pressure the US into signing it. It is a no cost effort by Europe that could pay off big in the future.
Oh, btw... I am not a Europe hater. I have spent much time in Europe including living in France. I am, however, distressed at the irrational behavior of Europe in recent times.
This is so exciting. Now, if the rest of the world signs on, and the global circulation models are correct, and we have political stability for the next 100 years, and the forecast massive disruptions of economies by Kyoto don't cause nations to drop out, and we have anticipated all energy related technologies for the next 100 years,...
Then...
Global warming will be delayed by 6 years!
Obviously the US should adopt this treaty right away!
Seriously, Kyoto is fatally flawed. It does not have much effect on global warming other than delyaing it a few years, and that itself is dependent on all of the assumptions above. Furthermore, it does not put controls on the most populous nations in the world, which are rapidly increasing their emissions as their economy improves!
Kyoto is nothing more than another European inspired attempt at hobbling the United States and improving European competitive position. Europe, because of its much greater population density, needs less fuel than the US. Furthermore, its citizens already drive in tiny cars (due to extortionate fuel taxes and other laws) and already suffer a much higher traffic death rate per mile.
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Okay, but it would be nice if your hypothesis would come with some falsifiable tests that distinguish it from the prediction of man made global warming - like it is not going to become hotter, wetter etc. and/or the recent increases will revert soon. The man-made global warming hypothesis was put forth in seventies (after the immediate thread of glaciation went out fashion) and its predictions seem to hold brilliantly up to now. Even you donâ(TM)t seem to dispute this.
Exactly *which* of the hundreds of global warming predictions are you referring to? And even global warming proponents are too careful in their science to take a 20 year period as being in the slightest bit meaningful in this issue.
I guess you mean that the earth has warmed in the last 150 years. Yes, I accept that. Of course, the fact that we have been coming out of the little ice age, and are not yet up to the temperatures of even historic past, would tend to indicate that perhaps the climate was warming anyway. There is NO evidence of human effects on global warming. The time series is just too short.
Of course, one could look at the graphs of CO2 levels vs. the warming. Then one would see that a whole lot of the warming took place *before* the bulk of the CO2 was released, and that we had cooling for several decades after that.
As far as falsifiable tests go... would you care to suggest tests for the anthropogenic theories? I haven't seen any yet. The whole problem with global warming policy is that it is based on global warming conjectures, which cannot be falsified any more than they can be proven, because the time scale of data is too small.
So what, a variation in the solar irradiance is current the prime suspect for the medial warming period. This does not change the fact that the vast majority of climate scientist seem to favor the anthropogenic global warming theory.>/i>
I challenge your last sentence. The vast majority of climate scientist favor the hypothesis that the earth has been warming. That is a far cry from them favoring the anthropogenic theory. And also, scientific truth is hardly a majority issue. After all, the vast majority if geologists resisted the continental drift theory for many years, until the evidence became overwhelming.
There already are signification restriction on the use of energy in Europe, Japan and some in the US. In the aftermath of the oil embargo of the seventies, Europe and Japan implemented polices to reduce their fatal dependency on foreign oil imports. As a consequence their use of energy per capita is roughly half of an US citizen. Granted there are many reasons for the latter fact but the lack of a political will to reign in energy consumption is a major component.
Sure is. Another way to put it is that Americans are more dependent on energy because we have much greater distances to travel. And furthermore, we are less dependent on Arab oil than Europeans are, so energy reduction is less important. Finally, as indicated by American's choice of relatively safe SUV's (at much greater cost) over relatively unsafe fuel efficient vehicles, we are more likely to put personal safety ahead of vague predictions by politicians.
Personally I doubt that the US economy would to be doing much worse if its citizenry would be driving smaller more energy efficient cars in stead of gas gosling SUVs.
The fuel economy standards are estimated to cost 2000 - 3500 American lives per year directly in reduced auto safety. This estimate is from the National Research Council, a pretty good source. Personally, I think Europeans should feel free to tax their citizens on gasoline, and the citizens should feel free to buy those tiny little gadgets you guys call automobiles. They fit better in your tiny little streets ( a historical artifact).
But see below...
Your last assertion is pure fiction. Europeans were genuinely surprised and upset that the US strongly turned against a treaty that in large part was brain child of the Clinton administration â" however I grand that some of the signing states are secretly gleeful that the whole Kyoto thing fell through.
European citizens may have been surprised, but European governments were not surprised.
However there is a role of the government in imposing restrictions on economic activities when the actual costs are hidden or unknown.
I would argue that such conditions are one of the few cases where government economic intervention is justified.
Your evidence how such a decision would influence a complex system like the World economy twenty years down the road is certainly on much shaggier ground than current climate models.
Not hardly - we have a lot more experience watching the response of economies to coercion than we do watching the climate response to trace gas changes. BTW.... the UN IPCC had forecasts of the economic impact of Kyoto, and they were substantial (although later drafts left it out).
Now what about lowering taxes based on a trillion dollars budget surplus prediction? Imo a prototypical example of the voodoo science coming out of conservative think-tanks sponsoring the majority of studies refuting the anthropogenic global warming theory.
I note you fail to address the silliness of Kyoto by itself. That is wise, because the *only* defense of Kyoto is that it would be a first step that would have only symbolic value, but maybe somehow would cause societies to enter into more onerous treaties in the future.
Regarding lowering taxes and budget surplusses... lowering taxes in general is a good idea when they take an unprecedented proportion of the GDP at the same time that defense costs are the lowest in a decade in the world's only superpower. Budget surplus predictions, which BTW came from the left AND the right, are of course almost as difficult as climate predictions. However, I would point out that the left, not conservatives, were very happy to spend that very same surplus... except they spent it on government programs instead of tax reform.
To address the "voodoo science" about conservative think-tanks sponsoring anti-global warming studies... Where do you get that information? Almost all climate science is sponsored by the government. It is true that under the Clinton administration, climatologists were much more likely to get grants for studies likely to confirm global warming than those likely to refute it. But my arguments against global warming hardly come from conservative think tanks, and it is just plain silly to argue so.
If you can't look at the primary information; if you don't understand the difficulties of climate prediction; if you don't understand the folly of making predictions of slow systems based on short term data, then you may have to rely on think tanks to boil the issue down for you. I don't have those handicaps.
Actually, my comments about data quality were primarily aimed at pre-data and paleoclimate, where the data discrepancies or chains of assumptions are the longest. For example, my coral comment is purely aimed at paleoclimate.
The problem with the perturbations in the past is identifying, with good data, the perturbations, and also separating cause from effect. In paleoclimatic data, for example, there are cases of warming coincident with high CO2, but not cases where you can prove that the CO2 caused the warming.
As far as the last comment, you are illustrating your ignorance of the complexity of the system. In a system with no clouds, no plants, no erosion, etc, the simple physics of CO2 heat trapping would dominate all but extraterrestrial effects (i.e. solar irradiance). I don't live in such a simple world. I live in one where there are negative feedbacks and positive feedbacks. Such a system can have hard-to-predict responses to such forcing. For example, with strong negative feedback, the effects of the CO2 may be overwhelmed by natural variability.
The real PROBLEM here is the media garbling the messages the climatologists really want to give out
While I agree that this is a problem, the "real problem" is the politicos and environmental activists who have taken this scientific conjecture and treated as cut and dried, and used it to increase the donations to their organizations; and, the leftists who have a remarkable ability to find reasons to increase the power of government.
Without the politicians and the activists, global warming would be an occasional article in a science review area of the popular press, not constant hysterical headlines.
After going through a laundry list of possible flaws and weakness in the anthropogenic (cool word b.t.w.) global warming hypothesis you conclude that a competing hypothesis (of course you donâ(TM)t examine any of its weaknesses) must be true. The influence of irradiance has pretty good evidence behind it. It is not, however, my hypothesis, much less conclusion, that this is responsible for all of the warming. It is simply an example of contrary evidence that has arisen since the global warming hysteria really got going. It merely illustrates that part of the model was wrong (since it didn't take that into account). And I threw it in as one example of the many unknowns that make the anthropogenic global warming theory (I use that word you like so much because to mention global warming without it is incorrect) weak. It is interesting that you also bring up Kyoto as what a symbol. "A signal..." I can think of less disruptive ways of sending such signals that to impose governmental restrictions on all sorts of energy using activities, without having any significant effect on the supposed problem. I would call that a signal that the parts of the world are willing to do illogical and unfair things in order to send a message. Pretty odd IMHO. The main thing that the US not signing on does is get the Europeans off the hook, because they knew all along we wouldn't sign on to this. If we did, Europe and the US would hurt economically, while we exported as much CO2 production as possible to the majority of the world where they are exempt from the silly rules. Of course, another way of looking at Kyoto is as a Trojan horse. Given that 90 or 95% of those in favor of Kyoto have no idea that it is totally ineffectual in reducing global warming, it would be fair to say that this is a way to sneak them into a much more painful regime. Sort of like raising taxes out into the future. It is terribly dishonest.
For all practical purposes, it is like if you die (and disappear) each time you go to sleep, and your complete copy gets reconstructed at the instant you wake up. This makes a big assumption: that your self is simply a product of the state of the atoms in your body. I think it is not unreasonable, but it is not a certainty. In this mechanistic age, this assumption is too often taken as an axiom.
What I don't understand is why most right-wingers in the USA like to classify issues such as global warming as a left-wing political issue. Is it not possible to be right wing and concerned about the environment?
The reasons are fairly simple. The "left-wing" on average is more closely associated with "protecting the environment," whatever that means. The "right-wing" is skeptical of movements which seek to increase the size of government.
The global warming "issue" only becomes political when attached to suggested government mandated responses. Other than that, it is simply a scientific question.
But, it is has become extremely political. The left is all over the issue, accusing anyone who does not support the expensive but ineffective Kyoto treaty of being an unrestrained capitalist monster. Some on the right (such as Rush Limbaugh) have reacted automatically to assume the science must be wrong if the left supports it (Rush is a good political commentator, but his knowledge of science is inversely proportional to the amount of certainty he has in his opinions about it).
So... look around. You will find significantly more on the "left" who are advocates for global warming "solutions" than you will on the right. And you will find some of those using the same tried-and-true tactics they have used on other issues: moral posturing, distorted information (read The Skeptical Environmentalist for accurately cited examples of the above), fear-mongering and name-calling.
Guess what. I am on the right, and I am a global warming skeptic (I don't think the forecasts are very accurate, and I think the proposed solutions are positively dumb). This is a normal alignment.
In my case, my position stems from a lot of study of the issue, a natural skepticism towards those who think they can predict the future with a crude computer model, a strong skepticism towards those who think they can significantly alter the behavior of billions of people with a treaty or two, and a decades long study of leftist activism and how it distorts issue - in other words, if the left is for it, you can be damned sure I am going to look into it a lot farther than what the popular press emits. Not that I always disagree with the left, but I sure as hell don't trust anything they say in public.
anyway... to respond to the previous poster..
You ask why it [the theory of global warming] is wrong. First of all, there is the issue of why it has to be wrong, as opposed to not proven. But let me at least throw some doubt on the science:
1) Much of the data is indeed flawed. It is riddled with assumptions and inconsistencies. It depends on long chains of assumptions. For example, sea temperature data has been inferred from characteristics of coral growth. And yet just in the last month a paper was published (Science) showing that the coral growth is significantly affected by other factors, blowing away that assumption. Tree rings are used as a substitute for temperature or precipitation data, but have been shown to be unreliable in many cases. Other data is significantly contaminated - I am using one such data set right now.
Refusal to accept that mankind CO2 is responsible for all or most of the warming we see is not the same as evolution denial, because the weight of evidence for evolution is enormous and rapidly growing. OTOH, the evidence of the effects of the human produced increase in CO2 is poor. It is based on poor data; good data is over too short a time period to be meaningful in a climate discussion; data may be contaminated by a number of factors (surface station urban heat island effect, for example), and even when known these contaminations are "adjusted" as best as possible.
2) Which "theory" are you referring to when you talk about global warming? As far as I know, the only theories are:
1) CO2 increases cause warming (trivial physics, but not a real hypothesis to test man-made global warming in this complex system).
2) Computer simulations show warming, and with enough tuning can sort-of match the past since temperature records were kept.
The latter is not a theory so much as a numerical computing based on known and unknown physics. However, if the predictions are accurate, who cares if it is a true theory or not? But one needs to understand the nature of climate models to understand the uncertainties. Let me list a few:
As far as competing theories, how about changes in solar irradiance? Evidence that this is a significant climate forcer has become undeniable recently. This doesn't mean that the global warming hypothesis is wrong, but it certainly means that it *was* wrong in its mechanisms.
On another vein, modeling relies upon estimates of atmospheric CO2 dynamics and yet we still can't account for about 30% of the CO2 disappearance from the atmosphere. This is a huge uncertainty.
The burden of proof of a theory is on the proposer. Science works by constant refinement of theories, and outright refutation of some.
3)It is not necessary to propose a better theory to disprove, or more importantly, cast doubt upon an existing theory. Science does not require that! One could have refuted Newtonian physics by detecting gravitational lensing, without having any idea what caused the gravitational lensing!
4) Casting doubt on anthropogenic global warming does not make one a nut. True, there are nuts who cast doubt on it. And there are prople who tend to doubt it based on their political leanings, just as there are people who tend to support it based on their own political leanings.
To gather from the hysterical reporting (each event of something warmer is reported as "casting more evidence for global warming" or something stronger), I would suspect there are more of the latter than the former.
A truly scientific viewpoint is that the earth has warmed about a degree in the last 100 or so years, but that the links between that warming and human activity are insufficient to establish a strong cause-and-effect relationship. Thus one should suspect that anthropogenic CO2 may contribute to warming, but not conclude that it does.
Finally, to move on a little bit. Even if we accept that global warming is caused by humans, and that the (ever changing) climate models are providing an accurate forecast, there is a complete lack of critical thinking about what to do about it! For example, recently on here we had a debate about the Kyoto treaty. Few of the debaters realized that the best climate models (that are accepted by the IPCC and the treaty community) show that Kyoto would only retard warming by 6 years in 100 years (or in any year make a difference of a tiny fraction of a degree). And yet most advocates of doing something about global warming jump on the Kyoto bandwagon. Without the (hidden from most of the public) agenda that Kyoto is only the start of significantly more onerous and costly measures, this is completely illogical.
Equally illogical is the resistance of the global warmists (if I can coin a term) to measures that might be taken to ameliorate the negative effects and maximize benefits from the positive effects of the putative warming. This trend illustrates a strong ideological agenda - a strong bias towards forcing solutions upon unwilling mankind without a real cost-benefit analysis.
Finally, what is really illogical is the idea that we, as the people currently on earth, can do much about global warming. We have already seen that the US will not sign onto a basically symbolic (if expensive) measure: Kyoto. We must know that more significant measures will face much stronger resistance. We excuse China and India from Kyoto and yet somehow in the next 100 years imagine that they will not make up for the CO2 emissions reduced by Kyoto.
We have the arrogance (or some do) to believe that we can change the behavior of mankind, against the near and medium term benefit of most, and maintain that change for 100 years. I have seen no evidence that humans are better behaved now than they were 100 years ago, when people were then postulating utopian ideas (before WW-I, WW-II, Soviet Communism, Einstein's theories and the consequences, etc).
Even worse, we have the arrogance to assume that we should punish people today in the blind assumption that those in the future will not come up with technologies that will make the whole issue moot! Amazingly, this is even strong here on this board where most of the participants have been involved in remarkable technological transformation over short periods of time.
They are not conservative policies. Conservatives are not happy with Bush on this issue.
Of course it was. The National Review, unlike, say, the New York Times, is very open about the fact that it is a conservative opinion journal.
Let's see, we have UN slammed repeatedly,
Certainly the UN deserves lots of slamming. It is an organization renowned for its corruption; it is undemocratic, with the Republic of Tonga given the same vote as the U.S. or India or China; it consumes large amounts of money and only rarely accomplishes any good.
open source commie liberal trash berated
Open source is not mentioned. The words do not appear in the aricle.
Bush looked up to for crapping on international treaties..
This is wrong? One of the treaties (ABM) was not international, but bilateral, and was with a party that has not existed for 10 years. The other treaty (Kyoto) is absurd by itself (delaying global warming by 6 years 100 years from now if everything goes according to the plan). So what is wrong with "crapping on these?"
I especially enjoyed the part which equated foreign aid to funding kleptocracies. Yep. And this is exactly right. Foreign aid has funded way too many corrupt officials. Sometimes it does good, but too often it does not. Personally I think much of the foreign aid is spent in ways that hurts the recipient nations more than helps them, but .. Hard to come up with something better.
National Review has long argued that foreign aid indeed does harm recipient nations. Originally foreign aid was thought to only be efficient if given to governments themselves for large infrastructure projects. All that did was result in a lot of unneeded (and untested by the market) corrupt infrastructure projects, filling the pockets of corrupt government officials and their cronies, while leaving the nations in greater and greater debt. It was definitely no favor to those countries, but rather a typical failure of central planning.
Harmful aid is worse than no aid at al!
On the subject of space... it is clear form history that in most undertakings, private enterprise is more efficient at making progress. But private enterprise (not to mention human freedom) requires property rights. If space is to be colonized, it's citizens and those who provide the capital for their efforts will require the same sort of guarantees that work on earth: human rights including property rights; democracy; transparent system of law enforcement.
As far as supplying power to the speakers, you simply need wire large enough to carry the peak currents, and low enough resistance that the impedance (hopefully resistive) of the speaker is quite low compared to the resistance of the wire. However, even if this is not the case, you do not increae the distortion (as long as the amplifier is not mismatched), but rather simply reduce some of the power available to the speaker which does not produce distortion, but rather produces simply slightly less power. Everything else you say about speakers is simply irrelevant.
Thus if you are running, say, 1000 watts RMS (enough to break your ears easily), and the speakers are 4 ohm impedance, you have an average current of 16 amperes. This current is easily carried by normal house wiring for a hundred feet! So no problem with the wire melting.
Now, to make sure you don't loose a significant amount of power to resistive heating in the wire, let's say that you are willing to sacrifice only 1/10th then you need the resistance of the wire to be less than 1/10th the equivalent resistance of the amplifier - i.e. you need it to be less that .4 ohm. If your wire is 20 feet long, then it can be as small as 19 gauge (convenient, since you need 18 gauge wire to carry 16 amps without getting too hot). So by this analysis, 18 gauge (smaller than "zip" cord - extension cord - wire).
Another reason that you failed to mention is the impedance of the wire. If the wire is not purely resistive, it will cause a rolloff with frequency - the pwr to the speakers will decline with frequency. Here is a table showing the rolloff at 30KHz for a 20 foot cable of varying widths:
Wire Gauge ... Diameter inches ... Rolloff at 30 KHz(dB ... 1.8dB ... 2.18dB .29 ... 2.5dB .1 ... 2.7dB .04 ... 2.9dB
?... 10
?... 2
1...
10...
18...
Finally! An effect that we can measure of small wire. But note: with a wire 3 inches (!) in diameter, you have almost as significant rolloff as you do with a wire of .04 inches in diameter. Not a major effect, in other words.
But... if you really care about the difference in rolloff between 1.8dB and 2.9dB, you are much better off with 10" WIDE cable than big fat cables.
Of course, a much simpler and perfectly adequate approach to this is to use an equalizer (very simple in this case) to compensate for the inductive rolloff.
The math of this is simple - and applies to RF as well as AF. Take two of the signals in the systemm and approximate them for as sin waves. The nonlinearity can be modeled as a power series, so you have terms of the form:
f(a,b) = A*(a + b) + B*(a + b)^2 + C*(a + b)^3...
Substitute
a=sin(w1*t+phi)
b=sin(w2*t)
And do the trig and you can see that you end up with all sorts of neat frequencies such as
w1-w2, 2*w1-w2, etc.
Now, instead of f(a,b), imagine f(a,b,c,d,e,f,g...)_ and you can see the mess that intermodulation makes. It basically mixes (in the frequency domain) all of the signals AND all of their harmonics in all possible combinations!Tube amplifiers *do* sound different because their distortion curves are different than solid state amps. Why audio "purists" prefer one distortion curve to another is what I don't understand. What I want is minimal distortion overall!
But then, audiophiles also buy gigantic cables because they imagine that their speakers will sound better attached to them... etc.
Technical note: The coefficients on the various terms of the power series tend to go down with the order of the term. And, some configurations approximately cancel out all odd or even terms.
When I buy an SUV for safety, I am not foolish enough not to use my seatbelt.
And, I tend to believe the NAS when they say that smaller cars are causing 2000-3000 deaths per year in the US. They have no axe to grind.
This is a common misunderstanding, based simply on the idea of momentum conservation in a head-on collision. Big cars are inherently safer - even if they collide with each other. Put another way, they are safer in a collision with a stationary boundary, they are safer in a side collision. An important ratio is that of the mass of the car to that of its occupants. This is in addition to the ratio of the mass of the car to the mass of what it collides with (conservation of momentum).
As to your argument about CAFE and SUV's, you just don't understand at all. Without CAFE, there would be much more choice in big cars. There would more choice... period. Certainly some people buy SUV's for other reasons (I originally bought SUV's to go to otherwise inaccessible places), but CAFE standards have a major impact.
If you don't believe me, read what the trade press has to say about it. Americans didn't make light trucks over 50% of total new car sales just out of wierdness!
The American media is biased against Israel ? You must be having a laugh. Even a cursory glance at the reporting from the US networks compared to teh rest of the world's media will show a huge pro-Israel bias, to the extend that many stories that run elsewhere that may result in Israel being seen in a negative light are simply not run in the US media.
You do not use a reasonable benchmark. Bias is not measured against other media reporting.. it can only be measured against objective reality.
I make my own judgements on media. I also know the attitudes of american media. Even though there are a disproportionate number of Jewish people in and owning the media, it still has had an anti-Israel bias - especially since the start of the first Intifada. The reason is that the media has a marxist bias (by that I don't mean that the media is marxist, but that it leans in that direction). And the American take on Marxism is to reflexively support the oppressed. And the Palestinians are oppressed. So the American media tends to support them.
It is only since the foolish use of suicide bombers that the American media has started a more favorable showing of Israel. This is because Americans can identify with innocent civilians who look like them, think much like them and live much like them who are mercilessly killed and maimed. Of course, the events of 9/11 amplify that psychological bond. Even our media can identify with these victims. Thus the Palestinians have made the error of turning their enemy into a victim, even more appealing to our media's bias towards any victims than the Palestinians themselves. And of course, the events of 9/11 amplify that psychological bond.
Thus today the American media reports much more of the terrorism than it did before the use of these tactics. The Palestinians have made a terrible mistake, not to mention having committed acts of extreme moral repugnance, by their use of these tactics. They have lost most of the American media's natural bias towards them.
BTW, I also read the Arab and Israeli media and find that the Arab media is by far the most biased. The Israeli media available on the web ranges from right wing to left wing, and get quite a diversity of reporting from there.
What this has to do with global warming... I don't know. But I am simply responding.
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
It is, but government often does stupid things. This is one of the reasons for American distrust of government (which you asked about elsewhere). It was, of course, a political compromise, which is what democracies do.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
I agree. I have read the statistics in the past. I don't have anything current. As of the time I read it, the European rate was quite high. Actually a death rate per mile/km would be more meaningful than per capita.
However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that...
Yes, it is much more the case because so much of our country was developed more recently, and because we have so much land. The reason for the SUV is simply size and safety. And again, I think there would be a lot fewer of them if we didn't have the silly CAFE rules.
Oddly enough, SUV's are also a status symbol. Why, I don't know. I guess for the same reason that many urban Americans who have never been close to a live bovine wear cowboy boots and dress. Sort of odd. I own SUV's strictly for safety and comfort, and also at because I sometimes go into country where I truly need a powerful vehicle with four wheel drive. I live in Arizona and we have plenty of wilderness left.
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed... :-)
True enough. The difference is that our own media is mostly Europhile and continuously agrees with you guys.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
It is because of our dependence on automobile transport, which is where the majority of the reductions would come. You guys are already paying the high taxes on gas and the high taxes for train systems, etc. We are not, but would have to. So the delta is large for us, but not for you.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
Ah, here we get to the heart of the matter. Here are some issues to ponder:
These are effects in the human system, which are even harder to predict than the climate itself! Thus my version of the precuationary principle is to avoid such major changes without a good idea of the harm they may cause!
My objection to Kyoto is that it can only be one of two things:
Overall, I do not object to emissions reductions. I object to doing it in a dumb way. For example, in the US we have not built any nuclear power plants since 1979, due to illogical and hysterical reactions fired by environmental extremists. And yet nuclear power is by far the cleanest large scale power source available - i.e. the only one that can make a major difference. The other "power source" that is significant is conservation, but the US has already taken major steps in this direction, with little effect at all! It seems that the more efficient we make things, the more we use them!
An ideal solution would be a hydrogen powered transportation system. Unfortunately, this would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment, just for the US. Furthermore, hydrogen power is far less energy efficient than gasoline (hence my desire for nuclear plants - to produce the electricity necessary to prepare the hydrogen). It may be that over time, we are able to evolve in this direction.
What I will fight is anything that compromises the safety of myself and others so that the people in 2100 can wait until 2106 to get the same amount of global warming. And I will also object to schemes which are likely to result in vast deaths in the third world due to economic losses resulting form those schemes. I would rather see a few degrees of temperature rise (and related sea level rise) if those people can be brought into the second or first world! And that is one of the possible tradeoffs - in spite of the Kyoto attempts to adjust the balance. First... a meta-comment. Thanks for the tone of your post. I just responded to one that was quite disrespectful (of course I responded in kind). Yours is a breath of fresh air.
Ok, got it. Surprises me nevertheless, because I've seen quite some cars in the US, which I would consider "big" (I never said, everybody is driving a SUV). So why are SUVs excluded? Sounds pretty stupid...
It is, but government often does stupid things. This is one of the reasons for American distrust of government (which you asked about elsewhere). It was, of course, a political compromise, which is what democracies do.
At this point, it would be really interesting to see some reliable figures of traffic deaths per capita or per car in the US vs. Europe. Unfortunately, at least my quick google search didn't turn up anything official... Anybody?
I agree. I have read the statistics in the past. I don't have anything current. As of the time I read it, the European rate was quite high. Actually a death rate per mile/km would be more meaningful than per capita.
However, as I said before, I agree that this is more often the case in America than in Europe. But still I don't see, why you would need a SUV for that... Yes, it is much more the case because so much of our country was developed more recently, and because we have so much land. The reason for the SUV is simply size and safety. And again, I think there would be a lot fewer of them if we didn't have the silly CAFE rules.
Oddly enough, SUV's are also a status symbol. Why, I don't know. I guess for the same reason that many urban Americans who have never been close to a live bovine wear cowboy boots and dress. Sort of odd. I own SUV's strictly for safety and comfort, and also at because I sometimes go into country where I truly need a powerful vehicle with four wheel drive. I live in Arizona and we have plenty of wilderness left.
Right. But it's not like Americans never feel like they know how we Europeans should proceed... :-)
True enough. The difference is that our own media is mostly Europhile and continuously agrees with you guys.
You said that before, and I still don't get it. Why would it cost you more to care about the environment? The Kyoto protocol want relative reducement! Nobody says, the US should have the same level of car emissions as Europe. And honestly: The height of the emission per captia figure of the US (2.5 times as high as Europe or Japan) can't really be explained with more transportation usage... So there should be a big area of possible improvement.
It is because of our dependence on automobile transport, which is where the majority of the reductions would come. You guys are already paying the high taxes on gas and the high taxes for train systems, etc. We are not, but would have to. So the delta is large for us, but not for you.
True. On of the fundamental differences in European and American culture. Not a bad thing in my opinion. I never understood this "don't trust your government"-attitude some Americans have.
This is hardly the place to get into it in detail, but it is a major difference. I know why I don't trust government, but I don't know why you would trust it. I view government as a necessary evil, which means that prudence to me dictates as little government as necessary. I do not view government as an instrument for moral good, but only as an instrument to prevent harm. I value my freedom from coercion, and I deeply resent the already large amount of interference that the US government has in my life (but I recognize the need for that government, of course).
No. First off, there's already disagreement about if there are any uncertainties about global warming. But let's say there are. Let's assume, we don't know for sure if global warming is happening. Then it's still not worth the risk! Reducing emissions now is the only way to assure we're not destroying the environment (well, not more than we already do, anyway).
Ah, here we get to the heart of the matter. Here are some issues to ponder:
My objection to Kyoto is that it can only be one of two things:
Overall, I do not object to emissions reductions. I object to doing it in a dumb way. For example, in the US we have not built any nuclear power plants since 1979, due to illogical and hysterical reactions fired by environmental extremists. And yet nuclear power is by far the cleanest large scale power source available - i.e. the only one that can make a major difference. The other "power source" that is significant is conservation, but the US has already taken major steps in this direction, with little effect at all! It seems that the more efficient we make things, the more we use them!
An ideal solution would be a hydrogen powered transportation system. Unfortunately, this would require tens of trillions of dollars of investment, just for the US. Furthermore, hydrogen power is far less energy efficient than gasoline (hence my desire for nuclear plants - to produce the electricity necessary to prepare the hydrogen). It may be that over time, we are able to evolve in this direction.
What I will fight is anything that compromises the safety of myself and others so that the people in 2100 can wait until 2106 to get the same amount of global warming. And I will also object to schemes which are likely to result in vast deaths in the third world due to economic losses resulting form those schemes. I would rather see a few degrees of temperature rise (and related sea level rise) if those people can be brought into the second or first world! And that is one of the possible tradeoffs - in spite of the Kyoto attempts to adjust the balance.
One of the insults was the assertion that the post was "nationalist." Damned right. I believe, and can back up with an argument that doesn't belong in this discussion, that the US is a better nation than any European nation that I know (Britain being a close second) and am not afraid or ashamed to argue that. I realize that Europeans believe that nationalism is out of date and that extra-national bodies and procedures and agreements are the future of man (this is relevant - see 3 examples in point 1 below). I believe this view itself is dangerous and neglects history and the unfortunate nature of man.
1. The fact that the USA has withdrawn from so many international activities (climate change, international criminal court, land mines) has resulted in it being subject to criticism. ...misinterpretation of myargument deleted.... To suggest that these initiatives were deliberately developed to embarrass the USA is completely delusional.
Yes, it would be. Of course, those initiatives were not deliberately developed to embarrass the us, and of course I never suggested that.
I did suggest that there was an economic incentive for Europe to try to get the US into the Kyoto treaty, and there is. And if you believe that your governments are operating solely for the good of man and are not affected by such considerations, you are delusional.
I would also argue that such initiatives are partly due to European discomfort at no longer being the most powerful nations on earth, and in fact are partly an attempt to counter the power of the US, which they feel is dangerous and wrongly yielded, whether in environmental policy or the war on terrorism.
It is also true, that I, like many Americans, believe that all the three initiatives you mention above are foolish and dangerous.
As far as criticism from Europe, we hear it constantly, although mostly in regard to foreign policy. We constantly hear (through our Europhile new media) that we are "cowboys" while Europeans or "more sophisticated" or "more subtle." That criticism, as silly as it is, naturally biases us to be a bit less receptive to other European criticism. If you detect some anti-European ranting here, it is because this is an opportunity to respond to some of the anti-American whining constantly coming from Europe.
Europe will continue to make a number of changes in its economy to keep to the protocol. Whether you view this as changing or not changing its behaviour is irrelevant.
Yes, it is. Why do you bring it up?
Your confident assurance that "Brussells" bureaucrats are not democratically elected will come as something of a surprise to the European Parliament [eu.int] responsible enforcing the Kyoto protocol. Or is democracy outside the US of A not democracy by definition?
Actually, you are right. Sorry about that. I had out-of-date information.
4. I'm at a loss as to how to respond to this bit of incoherent blather. It appears to be a recitation of the first point, with a dig at evil US environmentalists thrown in for good measure. Presumably they are also making 'meaningless gestures to enhance their moral standing over the US'? Perhaps English is not your native language. Or perhaps you casually throw around terms like "incoherent blather" just for the fun of it. The fact that you cannot understand coherent English is, of course, a possibility. To spell it out in detail for you, Point 4 shows that contrary to what the previous poster represented, it is in fact possible that the US will sign Kyoto. It also points out why. I am sorry that the injection of my personal opinion into this point made it impossible for you to understand the factual information contained therein.
What would be more interesting would be for you to actually debate the issue of global warming, instead of picking at a reply to a reply to a reply.
Oh well...
US is not some flawless country, as it appears to be in your eyes.
Nothing like starting out with an incorrect and ad hominem assertion about your oponent. At least my ad hominem assertion is correct!
But anyway, to the point. You argue that we drive SUV's because we have the freedom to do so.
WRONG. I argue that we drive SUV's because we cannot buy large, safe cars instead.
Next you argue that we are limiting our options, well considering that polution does change the atmosphere composition and thusly must at least trivially change the climate, it is logical to assume that a solution that requires more man-hours to impliment but dosen't change the atmosphere composition and also advances research in alternate fuel devices, instead of stagnating on fossel fules would be a prefered solution.
In addition to be grammatically incorrect, the above is utterly illogical. It implicitly gives an infinite cost to altering atmospheric composition in regard to all other alternatives.
You argue that researching alternate fuel technology will destroy economies.
I did? Gee... care to put in a quote?
Unfortunatly you don't understand economics it seems, because if 1: there is a demand for a product, and 2: there are people to produce the product then 3: you have a working economy. No matter what form of energy you have, an economy will sprout up around it, because thats the way capitalism works.
Speaking of not understanding economics... the above statement stands on its own! Economics is not about the existence or non-existence of an economy. It's a little more complicated than that!
Following the logic that capitalism always finds the best solution, with no regulation is falwed, it's a fairly trivial argument to state that it would be benifical to hunt wales to extinction in order to aquire thier oil, when cheaper solutions exist. This is what pure unregulated capitalism causes, and obviously it is not the prefered solution.
You mean to hunt whales... to acquire their oil? Anyway... who are you arguing with? I didn't assert that capitalism always finds the best solution. And my argument is not falwed, whatever that means.
You state the law of unintended consequences (the what?) as the reason SUV's are popular.
Hey, you got one right, for a change!
You state that this obviously makes all envirmental action 'stupid' and 'limiting your freedom'.
I did?
Unfortunatly, the only thing that can limit our freedom, is censorship,
Oh, so the only freedom you value is the freedom to bloviate? Some of us value other freedoms.
I'm not going to debate this point farther, but if you provide a real rebutal, I'll argue it.
If I knew what a rebutal was, I'd try to provide it. Or perhaps you meant rebuttal?
Asking people to avoid being need-lessly wastefull is not adverting freedom, nor is it stupid.
I would agree that it is not "adverting" freedom, whatever that means. But governments don't ask, they tell.
I'd like to modify a quote at this point "Your right to freedom stops at my grandchildrens grandchildrens grandchildrens enviromental wellfare",
Oh, so you are so farsighted that you know which of my actions are good for your descendant's welfare?
You claim your more productive than the rest of the world, really? I'd like to see that backed up.
Yes. Go look up world productivity statistics.
I go to work every day at a corperate situation,
My sympathies. I work for a corporation, but I don't go to work every day.
and make sure my network and applications work, is this more productive than the same job in brittan, how?
Weren't you the one asserting that I have no understanding of economics? Get a clue dude... efficiency can be measured, but not by looking at just your own job!
I find it hard to believe we are the most prodicutive country in the world, I know alot of people who don't do anything productive at all. A great deal of our money is in the servicing of people, to make thier lives easier, not in the production of any tangeable good.
So obviously your personal acquaintances are more convincing than real statistics. Why am I not surprised...
And to believe that servicing people is not productive is rather ancient thinking... say 19th century, don't you think?
I'd like to close with, have you ever been overseas?
Yeah, dude. Many times. I've been to Europe, I've been to Korea, Japan, what was called then South Vietnam, and many other places. I've been to communist East Germany and just barely post-Communist Czeckoslovakia. I've been to Latin America and various other countries. I've lived in France and worked in Britain. So much for your assumptions.
However, as far as I know I have never been to brittan!
and it is ludacrist
Uh... is ludacrist a religious figure or a new rock group? Just asking, you understand.
As I explained. If Americans are to buy safe cars that are large enough to hold a couple of people and the results of a weekly shopping trip, they need a relatively large car. Because of CAFE, the auto manufacturers do not make many large cars, and they charge a lot for them, because of the poor mileage of CAFE. But SUV's are exempt from CAFE, which is why Americans buy them.
Yes, against other SUVs. I don't buy this safety argument. And of course if you add pedestrians and cyclists to the calculation, the safety record may look differently.
Against other vehicles period. It is not only the relative mass of head-on vehicles that count, but also the relative mass of the vehicle vs. the person inside of it. And then there are side collisions, and collisions with stationary objects, of course. The National Academy of Sciences, not exactly a biased group, has estimated that somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand Americans die every year due to CAFE.
You know... We have shopping outlets too. I agree, that they're much more integrated in the American culture. But anyway: The connection "Big shopping center" --> "Need for SUV" is totally bogus in my eyes.
When I lived in Paris, I could buy all of my daily needs within a block. I didn't need to make a shopping trip. Americans, OTOH, need to go miles typically just to buy groceries. So naturally, they want to combine multiple trips into one, and that means they need to carry more. They don't need an SUV to do it, but a euro-midget car just is too small.
ROTFL!! You're not serious with that one, are you? Americans need bigger cars, because they're taller? Because they are on average tall, and because they drive much longer distances. It is the combination.
Oh, and talking about "provincial viewpoints". Americans don't exactly have a great track record in having viewpoints other than their owns (i.e. considering out-of-america stuff...). I know. I just put that one in their to tangle your tail :-) Americans in fact are pretty provincial. What Europeans tend to be is "superior" in that Americans are constantly getting lectured by you guys (at least in the media). So occasionally we feel like teasing back.
Inefficient retail systems??? Anyway, they don't want you to do any of this. What they want you to do, is to be more aware about gas usage. That was the whole point I was trying to make. In my experience many Americans just don't REALLY care how much gas their car uses. Well, it's cheap, so why should they? I was just saying, that the awareness for these kind of things is a lot higher in Europe than in the US.
I think Americans are more skeptical of environmentalist claims than Europeans are, and are (IMHO properly) much more skeptical of government intervention. But we to say that americans care less about the environment would be wrong. We care a lot about it - after all, we have a lot more of itI would argue that Europeans have the luxury of worrying about such things because it doesn't cost them much personally to do so. It costs us more to do something about it, so we do less. I don't think it is a matter of inherent superiority of attitude... it is more the matter of human nature. But... I also would argue that the Europeans are much more likely to approve of government regulating their lives and in general interfering more in their economy. Where this trust comes from, I don't know, given the apalling behaviour of many European governments in the first fifty years of this century.
Finally, I would agree with the Europeans on government intervention (and disagree with many free-market americans) in one way: pollution problems cannot be solved without the intervention of government, because the costs are not felt by the polluter and thus market mechanisms are not sufficient. The difference is that I have far less faith in governments to make correct interventions than Europeans seem to have. And in the case of global warming, a good argument can be made that no action other than research is appropriate at this time. The uncertainties are too high as I have mentioned in previous posts. The most important difficulties are not scientific, but rather human: getting the whole world to adopt a policy like Kyoto and keeping it in force for 100 years, in order to delay global warming for 6 years, is just not a reasonable expectation!
How pathetic.
BTW... Americans have a pretty good grasp of the facts in that conflict, and we get both sides of the story also. In fact, most of our major media is biased against Israel, and has been for at least a decade. The American left, which strongly influences our mass media, always sides with the "struggle against oppression," or what it views as such, regardless of facts.
Having used European mass transit extensively, I think I am in a position to argue that it would not work well for Americans. The biggest reasons are our very low population density, and our highly concentrated (and efficient) retail distribution, which means that people need to be able to bring back a significant amount of goods per trip when they shop, because they have to go a significant distance to do so. In Europe, one is much more likely to have a short distance to go to a store, because they are not efficiently concentrated.
As far as reducing reliance on oil, the best way to do that is nuclear power, which is consistently blocked by environmentalists. We have not had a new nuclear plant started since 1979!
Many americans drive mid-sized cars. Hybrids are microscopic, they are kludges (extra parts). Many American drive small cars. However, unlike Europe, we seem to have more of a belief that freedom is a virtue, not a sin.
While science is far from proving that the current warming is caused by mankind, let us assume that in fact the hypothesis is correct. CO2 is a trace gas in the atmosphere, especially compared to the greenhouse gas called water vapor, but the actions of man have indeed caused CO2 to increase by over 30% in the last 150 years. So... assuming this increase will cause further warming, what should we do about it?
Kyoto attempts to simply reduce the warming. Environmental advocates also advocate a simple (if terribly expensive) strategy of stopping the warming and maintaining the status quo.
However, actually stopping the increase in CO2 is impossible without a massive reduction in population (i.e. a massive human catastrophe or global war). It won't happen for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the resistance of people, especally in developing countries, to the measures necessary to do so.
A more rational approach follows the following principles and facts:
The most rational approach is to accept that global warming is inevitable (if we believe any predictions at all from the imperfect science). We should:
Oh, and people care about the environment here in the US also. But we also care about freedom, and we would like our environmental sacrifices to be meaninful and likely to produce success.
Regarding smaller cars, your motives are fine. But you are you, and are not representative of all Europeans. Of course some people drive smaller cars out of environmental reasons (and they do in the US also). But there are other reasons (narrow streets in old European towns for example). You cannot deny that economics has a significant effect on the choices people make, however.
You ask about SUV's. I own two - one made by the Japanese (Toyota). I can tell you exactly why Americans drive SUV's - safety and comfort.
You ask... why SUV's?
Because of environmentalist-pushed regulations!
"WHAT?" You say.
Environmentalists pushed the Corporate Average Fuel Economy law. This requires manufacturers to have an ever rising average fuel economy in the fleet of cars that they sell. However, light trucks were exempted, and SUV's are light trucks.
Thus, Americans who desired larger and safer automobiles were forced by the environmentalist regulations to buy SUV's!
Environmentalists, and statist in general who try to use the coercive force of government to alter individual behavior too often ignore The Law of Unintended Consequences, as this shows so well.
Of course, a reasonable question at this point is why Americans want larger cars. I have already mentioned safety. The National Academy of Science estimates that several thousand American lives are lost each year due to smaller cars resulting from CAFE. Americans understand this instinctively and they know that larger cars are safer (and they are).
Okay... but beyond safety, there is another reason that Americans want large cars. One of America's greatest innovations, and a significant reason for our very high standard of living, is our innovations in the consumer distribution network. In this case, supermarkets, large department stores (now almost obsolete), shopping malls, and large discount outlets (Walmart, Costco) have greatly reduced the cost of distribution to consumers by eliminating middlement and bringing wholesale prices to the final buyer. A side effect of this is that consumer goods are concentrated in central points, and these central points are a significant distance from where most people live. In comparison, in European cities (and older US cities), one can walk to the grocery store, the bakery, etc. But Americans, if they want to be efficient in their shopping (and coincidentally fuel efficient) need larger cars just to carry home the results of the shopping trips. This is also why mass transit is a loser of an idea in the US.
Another reason for larger cars is the fact that the US is a very big country. I just returned from an 8000 mile driving trip (hunting tornados). And yet I only touched a small part of the US. Just driving across Texas is equivalent to driving the length of Europe! And when you must drive long distances, comfort is important! Most foreign cars and even US CAFE limited cars are too small for a significant percentage of Americans (who on average are fairly tall) to drive long distances in.
Now, Europeans, with their provincial viewpoint don't realize most of these factors. They want us to follow the same rules that they, with their high population densities and inefficient retail systems must follow.
I will post another direct reply to the main article on what I consider to be a rational response to global warming.
But its true. The gasoline taxes in Europe are extortionate. The fact that some European small cars are fun to drive does not negate the facts that Europe has a much higher percentage of people driving tiny cars with high mileage than the US - people make rational choices and it is rational to trade off some amount of safety for some amount of freedom as represented by the increased mileage of the tiny cars (although most environmentalists will deny us that freedom in any other areas). However, that choice is significantly dictated by the governments which set standards including the cost of gasoline.
Don't forget that big Mercedes and BMW's are also very popular exports to the US. And there is nothing like driving on the Autobahn and seeing the big European owned, gas guzzling Mercy's and Beamers zipping by at >200 kph. Of course, only those rich enough to afford them and the gas can drive them in Europe. In the more democratic US, our gas taxes are low enough that almost anyone can have a big car and drive it fast, if that is their choice.
In matters relevant to Kyoto, the "its hopeless so why bother" is not the US argument at all. But you imply that the Kyoto treaty is rational, when in fact it is not. Yes, now that the absurdities of the treaties have been shown, environmentalists are at last admitting that it is only the first step. Steps that would really make a difference (assuming that the science and other projections are correct) are obviously even more onerous, or they would have been put into the treaty in the first place!
The US is only the worlds biggest polluter if you consider CO2 to be pollution (not a totally unreasonable assumption). But we are not nearly the largest polluter relative to our productivity, which is a more rational measure. Every time somebody in the world uses a US product (including information/service products) they are benefiting from that pollution, but it does not get credited to us. Your use of internet technology and PC technology was directly subsidized by the pollution produced by our technologists!
Furthermore, Kyoto ignores China and India. If the US faces onerous charges for pollution, we will export much of our pollution to those countries, which are not required to reduce theirs. Net result: more pollution, since they are less efficient due to less capital available for technology.
What is fair in your mind is massive sacrifies by the US compared to Europe, and no sacrifices by rapidly growing, non-democratic countries such as China. This is fair?
Also, you ignore the points I made originally. Kyoto is based on global warming science. But that science is not in very good shape. Ignored is the fact that it has yet to come close to proving that the recent warming is anthropogenic, although I will grant that it possibly is. But more important is the highly bureaucratic assumption that somehow the magic signing of such a treaty will actually compel the world's population, for the next 100 years, to change their behavior even when it is against their best interests! In other words, it imagines that people will willingly suffer the degradation of their economies based on these treaties, and will continue to do so in the next 100 years.
Tell me, it were 1902 and you had the same science, would you be so confident in the treaty?
There were a few surpises during the subsequent 100 years that would have made the treaty meaningless: World Wars I and II, the rise of fascism, the rise of communism (the worst environmental disasters occurred in the USSR and Eastern Europe - I saw many of these myself in 1991), the development of the automobile, aviation, electronics, telecommunications, nuclear energy, etc.
Of course, you will say, it is part of a framework. This hardly inspires confidence.
The general increase in faith in the power of bureaucratic entities and international organizations seems inversely proportional to the ability of the faithful to enforce that power.
Finally, once again, you are pointing out what is the biggest problem with Kyoto.
Kyoto does nothing significant for the environment without further measures anticipated by its framework. Which leads one to the question of:
Why should we sign on to it, which clearly requires causes us more economic damage than the rest of the world, when even its proponents admit it won't do any good except to further the procedural path?"
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Europe has recently engaged in many meaningless gestures in order to enhance its "moral" standing over the US. Europe has yet to understand that it is no longer the center of world affairs. It has no military worth discussing, and no will to create one. It has a living standard 2/3rds that of the US. It has a demographic problem that is causing its population to rapidly age and diminish relative to most of the rest of the world.
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Europe will not change its behavior as a result of the signing, so it is a no-cost effort.
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The EU is a bureaucracy, not a democracy. The Brussells bureaucrats are far removed from the votes of individuals in Europe, and acts on its own. Bureaucracies have significant intertia and often do irrational things just because they appeared rational when the process was started (see Laws of Bureaucracy).
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It is not clear that the US will never sign the treaty. We have had previous fits of insanity, and as long as the treaty is out there, it could be signed in the future if we ended up with a sufficiently foolish senate. Furthermore, European signing of the treaty makes it easier for US environmental organizations to pressure the US into signing it. It is a no cost effort by Europe that could pay off big in the future.
Oh, btw... I am not a Europe hater. I have spent much time in Europe including living in France. I am, however, distressed at the irrational behavior of Europe in recent times.Furthermore, Europe has been losing other moral edges it had over the US. For example, the violent crime rate in Britain and France is now significantly higher than that in the US. The recent anti-semitism should be a source of great shame in Europe, but the rapidly rising percentage of muslims in France and England (see demographics above - the muslims are having more children) has muted the reaction to this.
Due to all of these factors, Europe is humiliated, and is reacting by attacking the United States wherever it can in the realm of ideology and international affairs.
Then...
Global warming will be delayed by 6 years!
Obviously the US should adopt this treaty right away!
Seriously, Kyoto is fatally flawed. It does not have much effect on global warming other than delyaing it a few years, and that itself is dependent on all of the assumptions above. Furthermore, it does not put controls on the most populous nations in the world, which are rapidly increasing their emissions as their economy improves!
Kyoto is nothing more than another European inspired attempt at hobbling the United States and improving European competitive position. Europe, because of its much greater population density, needs less fuel than the US. Furthermore, its citizens already drive in tiny cars (due to extortionate fuel taxes and other laws) and already suffer a much higher traffic death rate per mile.