They still don't seem to get it...

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(priusguy04 @ Mar 5 2007, 11:48 AM) [snapback]400397[/snapback]</div>

Do you have car insurance? Health insurance? You have no reason to expect that you'll be in a major accident this year or be diagnosed with cancer, yet you carry insurance for it. (Okay, with your profession, your work car could likely get banged up, but not your private car).

Why give your money to the fear-mongers who profit from people's illnesses, or fear of illnesses, but not put some consideration to the very real concept that mankind has affected global atmospheric levels of gases that are proven to retain heat (Anthropogenic Global Warming), and this warming could cause major problems, economic and environmental, for all of our children and generations to come?

Is it that you don't care about subsequent generations? Or you don't care that we'll lose our economic advantage in the emerging alternate energy, conservation and new tech fields to more forward-minded countries, like Germany and Japan? Do you like giving money to OPEC to sponsor their home-grown terrorists and anti-US agenda? Do you like being dependent on multiple countries for our energy needs, at the same time running up our trade deficit?

There has been much research in global climate, and all likelihood is that man is responsible for the majority of recent global warming, and we could be hitting positive feedback loops (like the melting of permafrost which has massive amount of methane locked up in it). Solar variability is the last great hope of AGW-deniers, since global warming is now unmistakably real. But solar variability can't explain what's been happening the last several decades, while it dovetails in nicely with models that look at the rise in CO2 levels (highest global levels of the last 650,000 years).

Mankind can affect global conditions, the ozone hole is proof of that. I would like to see the science you've been reading that makes you so sure of your position. George Bush has tried to help out the AGW-deniers, by changing the reports that scientists have given him on various panels, and companies like Exxon have funded research on this matter directly, but they come up with fewer possible alternates to AGW every year. Sooner or later you will have to admit that these people are playing the same game that tobacco companies played in the 60's and 70's, denying that smoking is dangerous.

I would love to believe that AGW isn't real, and we have nothing to fear, but I haven't found anything yet that isn't blown away by the evidence shown in some of the better science-based sites like realclimate.org. So please, prove us wrong. But until then, we need to start some very basic insurance.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 5 2007, 11:58 AM) [snapback]400409[/snapback]</div>

I like your answer. The thing that really boggles my mind is that a lot of the proposed solutions (solar energy, windpower, geothermal, better lighting technology, more fuel-efficient cars, improved insulation), is that they tend to generate American jobs and save us money (at the expense of sending massive amounts of money overseas to countries that don't really like us). Not only can we clean up our air, perhaps save future generations from great distress, but we also do the patriotic thing, now, for our country!
(As a for instance, see this organization that James Woolsey, foreign policy hawk and former CIA director, now a promoter of PHEV and BEVs, is a part of: http://www.setamericafree.org/who.htm).

 

You know, Ive been reading this thread and liken it to my own experiences as a carpenter. When I started in carpentry when I was in graduate school, all that was available was clear pine or redwood and clear hardwoods like Oak or Walnut for interior moldings and such. I got used to working with them. Clear pine and redwood are a real treat to work with and you know what, it's wasteful to use such materials when they get painted. We certainly could use MDF or finger jointed stuff for paint grade.

Over the years, I have started to adopt a policy to use whats just good enough to get the work needed done. Not in workmanship but in materials. I now use MDF and finger jointed pine instead of straight grain pine and clear heart redwood for paint grade finish work. I use MDF in stair moldings and sills around windows. I use glue lams instead of 4X12 lumber l from old growth trees. I use finger jointed 2x4s in walls and sole plates. It's good use of our forest resources.

I do not understand not adopting this same policy in all fields. Why drive an SUV that sucks 11 MPG when a Prius will get you there in just the same way at 50 MPG. Why put in a 8 seer air conditioning pump in when a 15 seer unit does exactly the same thing at better then 1/2 as much energy used. Why use single pane windows when for 1/2 again as much duel pane low E glass is available and will be way more energy efficient and the environment is more comfortable year around using them.

We can build homes using grid coordinates on 4 foot centers to waste as little lumber as possible and maximize profits while doing it and it has no down side effect on the spaces within. We can engineer our overhangs based on latitude and layout so you get max cooling in summer and max lighting and heat gain in winter. It is just stupid not to. We could insist that small solar systems being included in every new home and addition built from now on. God knows, we have other things forced to include when starting from scratch. Like sprinkler systems in homes, and smoke detectors, sanitary clean outs, upher grounds, and larger service entrances for easy upgrades later. Some are good sense, others are because of insurance companies saving money like sprinklers. You buy it at an inflated price and the insurance companies profit from its being mandated. If your home burns down it's insurance that rebuilds it not you. In California now 2 out of 3 new homes built are required to have sprinklers but there is no provision for other then an 8 seer air conditioner or an 87 % efficient furnace. Crazy!!!

Bush is just really stupid and so is our congress. However, you don't win the hearts of 51% of American voters telling them they voted for a nincompoop!. It seems in this country only a mandate gets things to change for the better and then it happens not for the common good, but because some multinational company profits from their introduction. Seat belts are a great example. Volvo introduced them in 1957 as part of their safety program. They were ordered removed by the NTSC. Later in 1968, more then a full decade later, they were required on all cars because the insurance companies realized that cars with belts cause lower medical payouts in car wreaks. Hello?? What about all the poor people who suffered debilitating injuries from them being ordered removed? Everyone can start by buying a Prius instead of a gas guzzling SUV or you can start smaller by replacing 3 incandescent bulbs in your house and replacing them with energy saving florescent lamps instead. If you don't care for the color they emit buy them for your porch lights. I'm sure UPS or the mailman wont care and neither will the bugs that circle them at night. Buy a setback thermostat and use it. When your old washing machine fails, buy a water saving machine instead.

It is crazy, wasteful, and stupid to think that the way its been done for years is the right way and the only way to continue doing them. Even the lowly crayon has undergone changes within the last 10 years so they don't melt and ruin carpet and seats so easily. Start by making small changes within your life to reduce energy consumption. Buy energy efficient appliances and water saving toilets. The planet will be happier you'll be more comfortable and we save some resources for future generations.
-Paul R. Haller-

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ Mar 5 2007, 10:56 AM) [snapback]400454[/snapback]</div>

This is exactly what it taught in so many alternative energy seminars, conferences, and college talks.

Switching to a sustainable economic model saves us much more money than we lose. We just have to get out of the mindset of gain gain gain and start thinking save save save. We end up the better for it.

Paul, you exemplify my arguement for better education instead of laws. Given knowledge people will act in accordance with natural laws without any prompting by government laws. Why? Because it just makes sense and people feel better for doing it. How many people feel better for not speeding? How many people feel better for buying a Prius and saving money on fuel AND helping the environment AND human health? That is the whole basis for the Triple Bottom Line or 3BL.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Mar 5 2007, 01:52 PM) [snapback]400450[/snapback]</div>

Evan, that's great but the world does not work that way. You are asking for utopia which is simply not attainable. The cheapest bidder for any product on an open market wins, whether it be for underwear, shoes, toys, tools, or energy. Walmart has built its empire on that concept and it been very, very successful at it. The American consumer has made it abundantly clear they could care less where an item or product is manufactured or produced.

With regards to Middle Eastern oil, that doesn't matter too. We could buy our oil from only US producers but then you would have a huge black market for cheap Middle Eastern crude. And energy prices would rise lessening the manufacturing competitiveness of the US.

Who wants to manufacture in America when it can be done much with much less governmental hassle/oversight and cheaper overseas? Windmills, solar cells, and everything associated can and will be manufactured much cheaper overseas. Most will not be built here in the US, that's for sure.

The only way you could reduce the CO2 output of a modern nation (or most other regions of the world) such as ours would be a tax whether it be in the form of a tariff, credit, a silly government program, or another line item on your 1040 with regards to energy usage. And then you run into the catch 22 of a slower economy, even less jobs available, etc, because less disposable income of the American public. Not a good way to win elections.

We are now daily seeing reports of scientists refuting the entire AGW myth. Soon AGW will go by the wayside along with the last past decades of over population scares, nuclear winters, Y2K, worldwide famine, etc. I hope Al and Leo at least have the manners to send you a thank card.

Rick
#4 2006

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Mar 5 2007, 11:40 AM) [snapback]400484[/snapback]</div>

The only myth I see is the one we are currently trying to live out with exponential economic growth.

Overpopulation is still currently a very large problem or the vast amount of environmental problems would cease to exist. nuclear winters are just a button click away, worldwide famine continues and other food related problems due to malnutrition and processed foods grow every day. I can only imagine how bad some of these things would be had we not made some changes decades ago and very likely mitigated some of the effects. Environmental degredation continues exponentially despite or more likely due to, our advances in technology.

I ask you this. What is your idea of a good plan regarding this complex situation of AGW? So far we (the ones who feel it is real) have given plenty of alternatives and expressed our possible plans and the naysayers have done nothing but shoot those plans down in typical non-productive "devil's advocate" form. Adress the issues and give us something tangible to work with so that we can move forward. You must agree that a business as usual scenario is no an option for long term prosperity.

 

Uhhh, I have to admit my addiction to raw, unadulterated, ear spitting, chest ponding, slammed back in the seat, horse power. I own 2 Prius but the other car in the garage is a 1971 GTO Judge with a 455 and a 4 speed. So, while I preach energy efficiency, I may only be doing it because on judgment day and I stand before St. Peter and he says, "I see you have been burning fossil fuels with reckless abandon for years". I can say," Yea, but I have 2 Prius... does that help?"

I have given up on my carpentry life and substituted it with working at Cal after my education. Is it better? Not really. There is a strong sense of pride building things that last beyond your lifetime but I got tired of all the problems in the building trades. It's way easier on the body to make a living doing research sitting in front of a computer then building houses. I do miss the satisfaction that came from using your hands and seeing a days work in a days progress toward completion. Education is the key to understanding, being accepting of other ideas and other cultures, being willing to accept new ideas and new ways of doing them without fearing them for being different, and it's education, that fuels novel ideas that help us to sustain our desire for staying comfortable and saving the planet at the same time. I also am no environmentalist. I have cut trees and used their resources to build homes and my living for a long time. I do, however, see that my kids will live in a world far different then the one I lived in because of my generations wastefulness. Now, for that reason and my own conscience, I do what I can and wherever I can, to save more of it's beauty and wonder for my kids. I hope it's enough.
-Paul R. Haller-

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Mar 5 2007, 03:04 PM) [snapback]400495[/snapback]</div>

Firstly, I disagree with nearly all of your above points.

AGW is a myth pure and simple. Live with it (but you won't have to worry about AGW long as it will "go away").

We were supposed to have a "nuclear winter" scenario when Saddam torched most of Kuwait's oil wells. Didn't happen. So why will it happen in a nuclear war?

Famine is not worldwide. Most of the world's population is the "fattest" they have since the beginning of time. Famine does and will always exist in small pockets of the world people still inhabit that have marginal crop and livestock sustainability.

The environment has not been cleaner since the start of the industrial revolution and continues to get better as advances are made in pollution control equipment available and utilized by automobiles and factories.

Business as usual does not mean continual dependence on oil until everything grinds to a halt. Business can and do adapt to changing situations. When oil prices go up, businesses and individuals will seek alternative forms of competitive energy such as wind, solar, nuclear.

But I do believe in your implied assumption that we should not be "addicted" to oil. Want to see alternative forms of energy hit the streets sooner? Then get the government and special interest legislation out of the equation. Why is it a law in most states I cannot or can only sell a certain percentage of my power back to the grid? Why does it take so long to permit and get a nuclear power plant online? Why are many communities allowed to have CCW's which forbid wind generators, solar cells on roofs? Why does the government encourage the purchase of large vehicles for businesses? - (which then in turn are often not used as intended by the original legislation)...

We all know the answers to these questions. Hillary won't fix our oil dependence. Obama doesn't even have a clue. Bush has clearly failed. No politician can fix our oil dependence. Only the will of the people and lack of government intervention can jump start our economy off the addiction to oil.

Rick
#4 2006

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Paul R. Haller @ Mar 5 2007, 12:28 PM) [snapback]400508[/snapback]</div>

We all have vices and make changes where we can. My addiction to HP was no different.

My buddy's race car

The oldcar. N/A and on the brakes before the beams

The autoX/Daily driver

The worst of the bunch 14mpg an 12.3@110mph 4x4 truck lol

So see, we all make changes in the face of new information. Well, we all should anyway.

 

If you look hard enough, you can still find studies and the "scientists" behind them that say that there's no real proof that smoking is bad for your health. There are still people out there who believe that the earth is actually flat, too. So the fact that there are some scientists out there who really believe that farting trillions of tons of fossil fuel pollutants in to the atmosphere doesn't affect the climate doesn't surprise me.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Mar 5 2007, 12:47 PM) [snapback]400523[/snapback]</div>

I guess in a world of Descartes based automata views it woulod be hard to see the connections in all these things.

Religion is a myth. A lot of things that are not testable become myths or stay philosophy. AGW is far removed from that and is testedable in many ways, it's exactness is limited at this moment but I would not even attempt to call it a myth. That is simply hiding your head in the sand.

Disruptions to ecoservices will most defiantely happen in a nuclear war or at a minimum could happen if the major arms are employed.

The ability to reduce famine by roughly 40million since 1990 is due to no small part in the use of cheap and abundant resources like fossil fuel an exploitation of lands and poor (short term productive)agricultural practices that cannot last in the long term. If you are familiar with the term "carying capacity" then you should know that all organisms are subject to this limit and often overshoot it for a short period of time before crashing. Many scientists believe this is what we have done. Technology has allowed us to overshoot this capacity but for how long?

The environment took a nose dive durring the industrial revolution yes and the air quality is getting better. Is it better off overall? No. Little thing like expanding population, landscape clearing and urban sprawl ruin ecosystems which futher reduce carying capacity in the long run.

My main argument is not simply with oil. It is our idea of economy trumps all and more = better attitude which includes a seperation of us from the natural world. We are running on limited resources and until we learn to work in a symbiotic relationship with nature we are on a course for disaster.

Not much I can argue in the last part of your post since it takes leave of the biological world and enters the sociopolitical and I pretty much agree with you there.

I will leave you with this: (not implying you fit this characterization but it does fit this thread)

"We will always have contrarians who's sallies are characterized by willful ignorance, selective quotations, disegard for commincation with genuine experts, and destructive campaigns to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists." ~ E.O. Wilson

*edited because my wireless keyboard like to miss keystrokes*

 

The chart above constitutes two lines of data going back 650,000 years from measured ice core samples.
The Red line is CO2 atmospheric content.
The Blue line is temperature

Do you notice the correlation between temperature and CO2?
Do you notice the current little Yellow DOT half way up the Red Line on the right? This indicates TODAY.
Do you notice it is currently higher than at any earlier point in time going back 650,000 years?
Do you notice the top little Yellow DOT? That is the projected CO2 level in 2050.
Do you notice the difference in CO2 between now and the last ice age? (last dip in blue line)
Do you notice the difference in temperature between now and the last ice age? (last dip in blue line)

What do you not understand about the consequences of not reducing CO2?

If still unclear then consider this:
If the difference between the current temperatures and the last ice age is the difference between the top and bottom of the last segment of correlated CO2 and temperature then consider what effects having CO2 rising to the current level and beyond will have on temperature.

The above picture is from "An Inconvenient Truth" starring Al Gore.
Copyright law say that use of a single frame from a work is fair use.

Specifically:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for non-profit educational purposes. Courts are more likely to find fair use where use is for non-commerical purposes.

The amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. A court will balance a finding of fair use where the amount taken is small or insignificant in proportion to the overall work.

I am declaring the intent of this use of picture as educational and non-commercial. Hence my choice to show this single frame from the movie.

 

Of course, 20 years from now when the hard hot fact of global warming has made even the naysayers' lives measurably more miserable, they will complain that scientists are largely to blame because they didn't do enough to get the warning out in time. And Gore will be especially excoriated for having made his film with an insufficient number of car chases and gun battles to have attracted a wider audience and thus gotten the word out more effectively.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Mar 5 2007, 02:00 PM) [snapback]400557[/snapback]</div>

You forgot naked women. :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Mar 5 2007, 02:47 PM) [snapback]400523[/snapback]</div>

Again, I ask for some kind of proof that makes AGW-deniers so sure of themselves. I have read many viewpoints and many science reports, and have never been able to see a rose-tinted future for long. I have elaborated on this more thoroughly in post 21, if you want to see my viewpoints on it.

Didn't happen because we threw a lot of money at fixing the problem fast, and we found methods to extinguish those oil wells in a fraction of the time initially estimated. We solved it by facing up to the problem, not arguing about whether it was real or not.

Agreed, famine is not what they predicted in the middle of the 20th century. Again, technology helped out, as well as large amounts of petroleum-based fertilizers and herbicides and transportation from good agricultural lands to elsewhere.

Some areas we have cleaned up significantly. Rachel Carson's "The Silent Spring" helped wake people up to the problem of chemical pesticides and the like. Government controls with clean air and clean water acts have helped considerably. However, we still have agricultural and suburban lawn run-off polluting waterways, with large dead zones and alga blooms in the Gulf of Mexico and along other coasts. I volunteer with a conservation group in Illinois, and I can tell you our biodiversity and erosion/flooding problem here is worse than ever. In many parts of the world, rampant logging continues without replanting or erosion control, and many extinctions are happening, just not where we can see them.

Can't argue with most of this. Stop the subsidies to big oil and big coal. Put an inverse tax on gasoline (increases for cheaper gas to moderate the effects of swings and encourage mild conservation). I can't agree on nuclear plants until we decide how to store the waste for 10,000 years (I'd be happy with 200 years, to start).

Sadly, you're largely correct here as well. I think the Democratic party is more willing to make the changes necessary, and at least they will pay as they go, not run up the bill for future generations like the Republicans do (I grew up Republican, but as they abandoned responsibility for paying for their mandates and increased exploiting the environment, I could vote for fewer and fewer of their nominations). But neither side has the will to do things that will cause short-term pain for even a minority of voters. And spending 20% more for a more efficient car (or higher gas prices, which will lead to the same thing) is considered short-term pain. But government has produced much tighter efficiencies for furnaces and refrigerators and such over the last 30 years and people didn't really notice. Why can't we do it for cars?

And while we're at it, we can put more money into DOE for R&D - there are lots of American companies with good ideas for cellulosic ethanol, high-flying windmills that have less downtime (windmill on a kite, basically), geothermal powerplants that can reuse oil wells for electricity production, etc.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ Mar 5 2007, 03:40 PM) [snapback]400484[/snapback]</div>

Uh...Where?

Or perhaps you mean people like John Christy, Richard Lindzen, Joe Friday.

You can see the Exxon memo recommending the government hire them here (page 7):
http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/glo...appC-part03.pdf

This went hand in hand with the activities of Steven Milroy, who, after his great work for big tobacco on downplaying the dangers of secondhand smoke, was enlisted by big oil to downplay the dangers of AGW.