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To the 34% of American Adults Who Are "Worried a Great Deal" about "Global Warming"
Preface: A recent Gallup poll showed that 34% of American adults worried “a great deal” about “global warming”. This essay is written for that 34%.
Many well-intentioned people are desperately trying to stop climate change …
And yet they are proposing things that will put more C02 and methane into the air and otherwise do more harm than good.
Frack That
Many propose nuclear and fracking as a way to reduce carbon emissions.
In reality, scientists say that fracking pumps out a lot of methane … into both our drinking water and the environment.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas: 72 times more potent as a warming source than CO2.
As such, fracking actually increases – rather than decreases – global warming.
Are Nukes the Answer?
It turns out that nuclear is not a low-carbon source of energy … and funding nuclear crowds out the development of better sources of alternative energy.
Mark Jacobson – the head of Stanford University’s Atmosphere and Energy Program, who has written numerous books and hundreds of scientific papers on climate and energy, and testified before Congress numerous times on those issues – notes that nuclear puts out much more pollution (including much more CO2) than windpower, and 1.5% of all the nuclear plants built have melted down. More information here, here and here.
Jacobson also points out that it takes at least 11 years to permit and build a nuclear plant, whereas it takes less than half that time to fire up a wind or solar farm. Between the application for a nuclear plant and flipping the switch, power is provided by conventional energy sources … currently 55-65% coal.
Scam and Trade
One of the main solutions to climate change which has long been pushed by the powers that be – cap and trade – is a scam. Specifically:
- The economists who invented cap-and-trade say that it won’t work for global warming
- Many environmentalists say that carbon trading won’t effectively reduce carbon emissions
- Our bailout buddies over at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and the other Wall Street behemoths are buying heavily into carbon trading (see this, this, this, this, this and this).
As University of Maryland professor economics professor and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission Peter Morici writes:
Obama must ensure that the banks use the trillions of dollars in federal bailout assistance to renegotiate mortgages and make new loans to worthy homebuyers and businesses. Obama must make certain that banks do not continue to squander federal largess by padding executive bonuses, acquiring other banks and pursuing new high-return, high-risk lines of businesses in merger activity, carbon trading and complex derivatives. Industry leaders like Citigroup have announced plans to move in those directions. Many of these bankers enjoyed influence in and contributed generously to the Obama campaign. Now it remains to be seen if a President Obama can stand up to these same bankers and persuade or compel them to act responsibly.
In other words, the same companies that made billions off of derivatives and other scams and are now getting bailed out on your dime are going to make billions from carbon trading.
War: The Number One Source of Carbon
The U.S. military is the biggest producer of carbon on the planet.
Harvey Wasserman notes that fighting wars more than wipes out any reduction in carbon from the government’s proposed climate measures.
Writing in 2009 about the then-proposed escalation in the Afghanistan war, Wasserman said:
The war would also come with a carbon burst. How will the massive emissions created by 100,000-plus soldiers in wartime be counted in the 17% reduction rubric? Will the HumVees be converted to hybrids? What is the carbon impact of Predator bombs that destroy Afghan families and villages?
The continuance of fighting all over the Middle East and North Africa completely and thoroughly undermines the government’s claims that there is a global warming emergency and that reducing carbon output through cap and trade is needed to save the planet.
I can’t take anything the government says about carbon footprints seriously until the government ends the unnecessary wars … all over the globe.
So whatever you think of climate change, all people can agree that ending the wars is important. (War also destroys the economy.)
Anyone who supports “humanitarian war” by the U.S. is supporting throwing a lot of carbon into the air.
Dumb as a Mongoose In Hawaii
Many scientists suggest “geoengineering” the Earth’s climate. But that could actually worsen climate change. It could also increase the risk of drought.
Moreover, geoengineering would increase ocean acidification and decrease available sunlight for solar power.
And once we started, we could never stop.
Some of the geoengineering proposals are downright nuts. For example, “government scientists are studying the feasibility of sending nearly microscopic particles of specially made glass into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to try to dampen the effects of ‘global warming.’ ” Others are currently suggesting cutting down trees and burying them. Other ways to geoengineer the planet are being studied and tested (and see this and this), involving such things as dumping barium, aluminum and other toxic metals into the atmosphere.
Remember, the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rats (which were eating the sugar cane used to make rum). It didn’t work out very well … mongeese are daylight-loving creatures while rats are nocturnal. So the mongeese trashed the native species in Hawaii, and never took care of the rats.
Similarly, the harm caused by many of these methods have not been thought through … and they could cause serious damage to our health and our ecosystems.
So – whatever you think about climate – you can obviously agree that we should approach climate change from the age-old axiom of “first, do no harm”, making sure that our “solutions” do not cause more damage than the problems.
So What’s the Answer?
If nuclear, fracking, cap and trade and geoengineering aren’t the answer, what is?
There are 3 main strategies which both climate activists and climate skeptics can agree on, because they have big upsides whether or not the Earth is warming:
(1) Reducing soot will quickly reduce melting of ice and snow. Reducing soot will be cheaper than the “decarbonation” which many policy-makers have proposed. And it would increase the health of millions of people worldwide
(2) Use specific smart combinations of solar, wind and geothermal energy
(3) Decentralize power generation and storage. That would empower people and communities, produce less carbon, prevent nuclear disasters like Fukushima, reduce the dangers of peak oil (and thus prevent future oil spills like we had in the Gulf), and have many other positive effects
We don’t need fascism to make this happen … We just need a sound plan.
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We did *not* cause this. It is futile to "cause" the reverse. It's futile to "cause" "stability". There has never BEEN stability in the climate and never will be. If it kills us, we will have gone the way of millions of species before us who were killed off by much the same type of phenomena. This is not new, and it won't change.
Grow up. When the people who are telling us there is an emergency start to act like there's an emergency instead of jetting off on private jets to fete (and fellate) each other, then I might start to think they're serious. But in any case they're still seriously full of shit and I will NOT willingly change my life to suit their fantasies.
I could put up some solar panels or a wind turbine and I may at some point for my own reasons. But global warming will have zero to do with it. Ever.
Our fuel-burning engines did cause this because we're not recycling heat or the emitted gases. If we did both of those things we'd have no problem.
If we don't stop causing it we'll end life for all humans and most ocean life and perhaps... 50% of all mammals. Hard to say. They can be very sneaky, burrowing and coming out only at night when it's cooler (than day, but warmer than nights are now). A cactus can evolve to suck moisture out of what seems to us to be dry desert air, the animals could drink from those, biting them open.
The bankers & politicians will be the ones who wipe out life as we know it inside of 200yrs.
Not me breathing out CO2.
And if they are so concerned about it, why is it, that they relegate themselves above it? Flying off to tropical locales for banquets to discuss "the issue". Obama himself, has no compunction about flying off to Hawaii or Mahhhtus VinYard, is he not concerned with his daughters future and their children to come?
Look, we've just gone through an absolute fucking orgy of crony green shit, where "we" are supposed to pay for the excesses of Solyndra, A123, Fisker etc. and East Anglia "scientific" fraud, prosecute these sons-of-bitches and then we'll talk.
It's a fraud to say "breathing CO2" is the issue.
Not all the humans and cows combined.
It's the fucking engines burning petrol distillates and you know it.
Keep breathing and shut down the engines.
It's the banksters and the politicians USING GLOBAL WARMING, making it happen through BURNING FUELS to run SERVER FARMS and ENCOURAGING YOU to go into debt to them to BURN FUELS to entertain yourself with bitcoins, xboxes and football on 50 inch TVs that is causing global warming and your death.
You so easily accept your execution and your slavery - no wonder there is no hope for escape.
'and East Anglia "scientific" fraud'
It's not a crime, there's nothing to prosecute. Peer review did its job: every kind of attempt to get at the facts and discover if what's presented isn't fact. That discovery happened & now that ONE party is properly discredited. Your focus, however seems to be uniquely American. it's as if the damage to all the rest of the planet, and by other non-American agencies, is invisible to you.
WHY IS THAT?
It's like Americans pretending winter in America is winter for the entire planet all at once. It isn't. WHY IS THAT?
"It's like Americans pretending winter in America is winter for the entire planet all at once. It isn't. WHY IS THAT?"
Why is it that global warming alarmists pretend that a record heat wave in one place, is representative of the whole world?
While record heat was elsewhere in the country, we were having the coolest summer on record in Los Angles.
Sorry, you seem to be very confused about who is claiming what...
'and East Anglia "scientific" fraud'
It's not a crime, there's nothing to prosecute. Peer review did its job:
Peer review DID NOT do its job. The leaked emails of an offshoot of statism DID THE JOB. Otherwise we would sitting around thinking these liars are the best & brightest of the breed.
AND IT IS A CRIME when someone uses their position of authority or trust to make false statements or to hide misleading statements or data.
Just because no one is prosecuted does not negate the fact that there is a dead body laying in the middle of the floor, with a knife sticking out of its chest, that has the fingerprints of East Anglia all over it.
I guess you and I have entirely different ideas of "peer review". If anyone anywhere on the planet can bust open a fraud and make it publicly known I still call it peer review. What the fuck else should I call it? Aren't we all responsible at some level for the knowledge we disseminate, discover, spread, cover up or twist?
"does not negate the fact that there is a dead body laying in the middle of the floor, with a knife sticking out of its chest, that has the fingerprints of East Anglia all over it"
Except there isn't. There's a disgraced researcher, disgraced paper & disgraced institution and nothing more.
"AND IT IS A CRIME when someone uses their position of authority or trust to make false statements or to hide misleading statements or data"
Under what laws? Far as I know: there's no such law.
"If anyone anywhere on the planet can bust open a fraud and make it publicly known I still call it peer review."
And if the crime is so complex, so well hidden or goes undiscovered it is called what, truth?...or an undetected crime?
"Under what laws? Far as I know: there's no such law."
You've already admitted a fraud occurred. Public universities or any entity that takes/accepts anothers money (in this case OUR money via taxation) has the responsibility (a fiduciary duty) to take care that it is used for the purposes stated and not used for personal gain. If they do not, they are committing fraud.
They hid and destroyed their research (public property, not theirs) because it was at variance to what they wanted to find and put their careers (the personal gain part of the crime) above the science they purported to be engaged in. The fact that they conspired among each other (read the emails) shows conscious effort to decieve for their own monetary gain. And all the tools they used (from computers to paper to pencils) is not their property, its the publics and/or the universities, not their personal property, in the commission of the crime.
In the private sector it would be called fraud & embezzlement and they would be prosecuted for it.
and in the private sector, as here with scientists, the acts of one do not speak for any of the others.
It was NOT just one...lol.
Its hard to have a decent conspiracy, of one.
The lead conspirators there were (Jones, Briffa, Osborn and Hulme) who's "work" was cited by the IPCC, proving once again, that a lie can travel half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.
Citing work isn't in error: the tree ring data is what was modified for use, ONE study, one incident. Not two, just one.
Give it a break...
That dog done quit hunting a long time ago...
Just ask the former Virginia AG....
A state, in the persona of a judges.
How convenient.
I suppose this is what you're talking about:
http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1102359.pdf
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ALBEMARLE COUNTY
Paul M. Peatross, Jr., Judge Designate
The threshold issue in this case is whether the University of Virginia is a "person" under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act (FATA or Act), Code §§ 8.01-216.1 through -216.19. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that it is not.
?Which bumps up against Citizens United.
Oh, my, which way to go with "the law" ;-)
Don't despair, we can count on the EPA. You know, the organization that is more concerned about cow farts than the actual radiation levels of Fukushima.
#1 they are not
#2 no one is
#3 the entire planet is concerned about global warming, not just America and the EPA is only within the USA.
Brilliant. If everyone is in on global warming wagon why don't you have China pay their fair share of the air pollution tax. Let me know their response.
Taxes don't reduce pollution. Only making better machines that recycle waste liquids, gases and waste heat will reduce pollution in combination with using less fuel, next to none for entertainment. Be entertained with live singing or a fuckin' book, not forcing an extra coal-fired plant to go online just to play the next massive online multiplayer WarCraft, MineCraft, etc.
"Taxes don't reduce pollution"
Exactly, but that's the tool politicians use to punish efficient fuel sources and to enrich their crony friends while setting new regs to further control the masses. While I typically see outrage over SVUs,light bulbs and cow farts (and now video games for crying out loud) where's the outrage over Fukushima? Do you know how the EPA "handled" probably the largest crisis to date? They raised the acceptable tolerance levels of radiation. http://www.turnerradionetwork.com/news/202-pat So this is who you trust to solve the world's problems?
Let you in on a secret.
Taxes are government's tool to ____
fill in the blank with anything. Global warming, causing it, stopping it, pretending it, wouldn't matter, every possibility, for/against simultaneously, will go into the blank.
And your point is? Pretty much a ZH mainstay that .gov is too large and has worked itself into every aspect of our lives because our nation has come to believe that more government is the solution to every problem.
And not one response about the EPA increasing acceptable radiation tolerences or are you still worried about people playing video games?
I'm not American: what the EPA does is of little consequence to me. What individuals for the entire planet do to pollute my air & water is a real problem, 1000000x bigger than anything the EPA would have an effect on me.
Maybe there's some hope for you then. :) I have no problem with people that want to clean the earth up but I still don't understand why you are so uptight about SUVs and video games when you have real gamebreakers like Fukushima, the BP Oil spill and the use of corexit or China. Then there's always the chemical programs used by agriculture and my personal pet peeve - disposable plastics.
They are all equally important and must all be stopped. Ignoring even one of them is global suicide.
YOU are da man!
or Cloudy With a Chance of Nutballs
Its the hot/cold/wet/dry/windy/calmness of it all that really freaks them out...lol.
Climate (THE WEATHER prevailing in an area) has always changed.
What kind of idiotic moron has just figured out that the weather changes?
The mammoths need to know what happened to their climate.
Its an outrage!
Yeah sure. No one understands global warming except a guy on Zero Hedge who isn't even honest enough to use his real name.
Bite me George Washington.
Yeah sure. No one understands global warming except a guy on Zero Hedge who isn't even honest enough to use his real name.
-- '0b1knob'
lulz
Lemme guess ... do you work for a crap-and-trade unit? Or a fracking or nuclear company that will cash in based on climate change legislation???!
Lemme guess...oh of course I would HAVE to guess since you use a psuedonym and on the internet no one knows if you are a dog. You however can deduce my motives by internet telepathy.
And for future reference the plural of mongoose is MONGOOSES not mongeese.
generally true on the mongooses, but i think the dogs are more easily told than that: constant references to aromas, colors not so much, little interest in "other" positions for intercourse, references to one's "master", fascination with urine. you get my drift.
Well, let me tell you something. I know George Washington and he is a friend of mine.
And you 0b1knob are no George Washington. :)
wit a correction like dat, we's all best be quite as meese.
Exactly! Please speak sense to some of these people. Let the Nuc and NG scam begin!
The fellow says he is joking, but the real joke is that this is all being played out when the ocean overturning current just switched to its other mode.
if you cant tell the wind where to blow, you are not in power.
.
Is that #7 or #10?
I'm kidding George, kinda ;-)
it was a solar/polar/holyroller vortex!
oops! got my science and religion mixed up there!
happens frequently in this 'debate'.
....science, with an agenda.
As many pro-warming "experts" as against.
Drive less.....not likely.
Fart less......impossible.
Get cows to fart less......seriously ?
The same people that are too "smart" for God, believe that your TV, car, country, planet, solar system, visible planetary systems.....unvisible planetary systems......everything.....came from one tiny speck/atom/individuality.......that EXPLODED to ctreate this ever-expanding universe.
What keeps our planets revolving around the Sun at EXACTLY the same distances?
Mass = attraction.
Why didn't the ULTIMATELY/SUPER attractive "speck/atom/individuality" keep everything from "expanding" ?
Confirmation bias.
BURN LESS FUEL per person.
EASILY accomplished.
A lot of driving is wasteful.
A lot of fuel burning for electricity is wasteful.
Pay for methanol fuel, make it yourself, run a fuel cell and use that for your entertainment devices.
Speakers, DVD, music, TV, x-box, etc., run them off that and not on-grid.
Then you know what fuel you're using and how much and will balance it back for yourself easily.
Methanol fuel cells have water for waste, not carbon, and are refillable.
Is that so much to ask? Methanol is cheap & common. Water is safe and if you're doing this indoors the humidity won't kill you, might even be nice in an arid environment, and it's even secure from grid failure for your entertainment.
I don't even drive at all. I use at most per day 3 x 100 watt light bulbs for no more than 16 hours a day usually with at least 1 of them off during that time when others are one, one monitor that uses 80 watts if I recall but 0.8 watts in power-saver mode, a 300 W power supply for the computer itself and whatever else comes from draw to run the oven which I use frequently.
At least I can justify the energy used for the oven per pound of meat is a small amount because I put in as much meat as can fit & be kept safely in the fridge after I've had a meal so I can easily reheat using the microwave (much less draw for total time than the oven to re-heat).
It's simple, intelligent planning like this which doesn't even impact your life in a bad way yet can use 50% to 80% less power.
No driving. No car. I use the bus. I'm sure a bus uses a lot of fuel but with enough people on it the fuel used PER PERSON is very small.
Thanks for conserving all the energy you do.
I am more than happy to consume it and use it for whatever wasteful purposes I can think of.
so you can kill us all? Will you at least make the attempt to contain the emissions, burn whatever you want, so no one has to hunt your machines down and melt them all? Or shoot the owners? We have crops & fish (food) to worry about, your games & Nascar aren't important enough to destroy all our food for your fun. You know people with guns will come, don't you?
spoken like a true member of any dying empire
@Bogus: One suspects that the bulk of your social life and entertainment comes from one of your hands.
I don't have or need social life or entertainment. I partied hard when I was younger and it's all worked out of my system. Eat-work-sleep. That's it.