Congress is considering climate change legislation more seriously than ever before. While there are several legislative proposals in the House and Senate, some of which could be quite costly, none of the bills would make an appreciable impact on future climate change. This is the nub of the climate change problem: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to make a difference will require cuts far greater than anyone is willing to pay for -- and this will remain the case until there are substantial technological breakthroughs to reduce the cost of controlling emissions or sequestering carbon.
Today's Washington Post highlights the economic aspects of the problem
Here's the good news about climate change: Energy and climate experts say the world already possesses the technological know-how for trimming greenhouse gas emissions enough to slow the perilous rise in the Earth's temperatures.If anything, the Post account understates the costs of meaningful emission reductions, insofar as it relies on Nicholas Stern, author of the the Stern Review. A companion story looks at the combinations of policies necessary to produce meaningful emission reductions.Here's the bad news: Because of the enormous cost of addressing global warming, the energy legislation considered by Congress so far will make barely a dent in the problem, while farther-reaching climate proposals stand a remote chance of passage. . . .
The potential economic impact of meaningful climate legislation -- enough to reduce U.S. emissions by at least 60 percent -- is vast. Automobiles would have to get double their current miles to the gallon. Building codes would have to be tougher, requiring use of more energy-efficient materials. To stimulate and pay for new technologies, U.S. electricity bills could rise by 25 to 33 percent, some experts estimate; others say the increase could be greater.
Most of the technologies that could reduce greenhouse gases are not only expensive but would need to be embraced on a global scale, scientists say. Many projections for 2030 include as many as 1 million wind turbines worldwide; enough solar panels to cover half of New Jersey, massive reforestation; a major retooling of the global auto industry; as many as 400 power plants fitted with pricey equipment to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground; and, most controversial, perhaps 350 new nuclear plants around the world.
One important debate in climate change policy today is over which, if any, government policies can meaningfully accelerate the discovery and deployment of new technologies. Some believe adopting a cap-and-trade regime and other emission control technologies will induce technological innovation. Others believe policies that are more focused on technological innovation, as such, would be more effective. What is clear is that without new cost-effective technologies, there will more talk than action on carbon emissions.
Perhaps it's true that increased carbon dioxide is to blame for rising temperatures -- but surely it's not the only factor involved in the net temperature change of the world.
All of the specific proposals you refer to address atmospheric CO2 specifically, not global temperature generally. How much would it cost, for example, to mandate that roofs across the country be painted white? Or to do the same to our national highway system? How much of a temperature impact would these have?
...enough solar panels to cover half of New Jersey
Only half? People will still support it.
No matter how innovative a technological approach to reducing carbon emissions is, it won't get adopted until there is a private cost to emitting carbon. That's why cap-and-trade systems or carbon taxes are needed.
If carbon emissions are free, no one will buy even the most brilliant technology for reducing them.
If these fruitcakes do start messing with the climate, I want legislation requiring them to indemnify me if they mess us.
That is what concerns me most about the climate change crusaders. There was a recent study that said that dirty snow (rather than greenhouse gases) may be responsible for most Arctic temperature increase.
It is studies like these that indicate that we need to work slowly to address anthroprogenic global warming. Imagine how if we invest trillions of dollars in order to address global warming only to discover that we were focusing on the wrong cause!
It really doesn't matter at this point whether these policies will actually stop global climate change. The point is that the benefits are still so great as it's basically insane not to invest in them.
Unless, of course, you enjoy paying $3 a gallon for gas.
I enjoy that a lot better than the $9 that's coming (on top of vastly increased food costs) because of all the schemes being proposed by the "global warmists."
That's not necessarily true. If fusion could be developed that produced electricity at a cost equal to or below the lowest-cost methods (e.g., at present coal-fired electricity, until recently natural gas was the cheapest)...then the whole world would very quickly convert to fusion electricity. And transportation would soon become substantially electrified also.
Similarly, people will buy energy-saving technologies simply for the cost savings, if those technologies are cost-effective...even if the cost of emitting carbon is zero.
Even if this were true (and the overwhelming evidence is that it's not)...
we don't need to do anything. That's the really cheap solution.
...this doesn't follow unless (1) the costs of global warming (whether avoidable or not) are zero; or (2) there's nothing we can do to mitigate them.
Of course, whether or not there are technological breakthroughs to reduce the cost of controlling emissions or sequestering carbon depends on whether the government creates regulation that creates a market incentive for companies to invest in technology that controls emissions or sequestering carbon - which is exactly what the current legislation is trying to do. There is currently absolutely no market reason for companies to invest in socially efficient low emission technology, and there will not be unless there is some kind of cost attached to emitting carbon dioxide.
Let's spend our tax dollars on purchasing carbon offsets for the entire country.
If it works for Algore, it should work for all of us.
Verdad?
Exactly right, I have no doubt that the "Gore" game is a bunch of BS (though I have given up arguing against religion), but I use the curly-q bulbs to save energy; a fan instead of A/C; combined trips to the store to save gas; etc. I do it for my own savings, no artificial coercion needed, thank you.
What do I get for my responsible conservation? A bunch of sanctimonious "do-gooders" that want to tax me into oblivion to satisfy their inflated egos and half-witted ideas about the Earth. Pfft.
So, we are blogging right now, using computer run on electricity, communicating mostly using the same. The fabs that make the chips needed for computers use huge amounts of energy and water.
And, yet, despite that, despite being able to fly cheaply around this country, and even around the world, living in a nice big house, have cars, air conditioning, etc., are all the sort of high energy sort of things that effectively increase our quality of life. I see. If investing trillions of dollars might alleviate global warming by less than a degree, it is a good investment because there is apparently a non-zero chance that we might be screwing up the environment. This may mean people dying for any number of reasons that might have been avoided if this money hadn't been diverted here.
Think of it this way - if we spend 10% of the amount of money that it would take to conform to Kyoto, we would have a good chance at eliminating much of the malarial deaths in Africa.
Initially, I was going to say that it is a zero sum game - the money spent on global warming is money not spent on fighting hunger or malaria. But it is really worse - the Keynsian multiplier is less than one (i.e. every dollar spent by the government not only doesn't spur growth, it actually retards it). As some others here have pointed out, $9 a gallen is 3X as bad as $3 a gallon. Actually, that may be a bit hight, but I think that the $6 a gallon figure is a lot more supportable for what we can expect if we implement these proposals.
And, please, please, let's kill corn based ethanol ASAP. Corn prices are heading up already. Yes, it might keep some of the Mexicans south of our border, since so much of their diet includes corn products. Sugar based might be ok, esp. if we can start allowing the Cubans to export the stuff here. But corn based is just silly. It provides almost no net positive energy, while making a lot of our food more expensive.
My point is that we are been rushed off to spent absolutely huge amounts of our GNP to solve this claimed problem the most inefficient way possible.
If the problem is truly global warming, and if global warming is actually bad (which the Russians, for obvious reasons don't believe), then what we should be doing is figuring out the cheapest way to solve the problem, not the most expensive way, which is what Congress, et al. are proposing.
And if the problem is energy, then let's not continue overlooking the obvious - nuclear. We really don't need to be able to guarantee that the wastes absolutely will stay safe for half a million years. That is beyond ludicrous. Within a hundred years or so, we will either be able to safely dispose of the wastes, or will be beyond worrying about it, having regressed to pre-energy levels, or having transcended this planet. So, make sure that the waste is safe for 2% of that time (10,000 years), use more modern technology, and build some reactors that don't emit any greenhouse gases whatsoever.
What must be remembered is that carbon credits come from caps. Some company gets credits it can sell by emitting less CO2 than it used to. Sounds good, until you realize that this is a massive government giveaway. Those companies didn't do anything to earn the credits except generate CO2 in the past.
So, you are going to have older industries generating credits as they spool down as they become obsolete. They will then sell these to the up and coming companies in new industries who weren't around to generate CO2 in the past, and so don't have CO2 levels to reduce. In short, a way to siphon capital out of the emerging markets into the declining ones, all under government mandate. I would suggest that is isn't the best way for our economy to keep ahead of the rest of the world with developing new technologies. Indeed, it has been often argued that part of the problem with Europe and its anemic growth recently is that the countries there are protecting their legacy industries at the expense of the new ones they need to grow. This would allow us to join them.
Can someone explain to me how it can be in my interests, now that you're past your productive age, to keep you alive?
In a few decages we're going to look back at how foolish so many people were.
This sort of like the theory of communism. Remember they used to say, no it doesn't work well now, because only a few countries are commie. You have to let it take over the whole world to see how good it can work!
And finally, though I do agree with Harry Eagar that human activity is not significantly fueling climate change, there is only one answer to "Why should I sacrifice for some breeder's kids?" The talmud recounts the story of an elderely man who was planting a carob tree. A passerby ridiculed him, pointing out that it takes 70 years for a carob tree to bear fruit, and that the elderly man would never eat from it. The man replied that he was planting it for his grandchildren and their children yet unborn, just as his ancestors had planted for him.
Society depends on the willingness of current generations to sacrifice for those yet unborn. (This is NOT an endorsement of the global warming hysteria, which in my opinion is best summed up by the Hebrew phrase "HaShamayim nophlim. Hashamayim nophlim -- i.e. The sky is falling.") jimbino's question could be leveled equally at improving roads, building sewage plants, providing for education, or any of a host of investments to improve life for those who come after us.
I am making certain assumptions from jimbino's snide reference to "breeders", but one can point out that one reason certain sexual activities are condemned severely by the Source of judaeo-christian morality is that those acivities provide dis-incentives to build for future generations. Some things are deemed anti-social not because of prejudice but because they are bad for society in ways that are not always apparent and that we do not always realize.
Mitigating policies based upon libertarian theory could/should have been leading the charge, by ideating free-market solutions to global warming. Instead, faux/quasi libertarian tanks have been a part of the denial vanguard. I categorise this as the right-siding of libertarianism. It was stupid, ill-advised and has been counter-productive to the adoption of libertarian thought. It has only resulted in summer libertarians, who frenetically scurry back into the GOP's clutches with even a passing reference to the possibility of a President HRC; even still, after 6 1/2 years of Mr. Bush's assault upon personal liberty.
It is still proper that free-market policy orgs accept the science and start contemplating solutions that can mitigate global climate change, which do not lead to the draconian nightmares that are a part of the solutions set upon the table up to this point.
Making carbon sequestration a commodity which can be traded would help. Another solution could be to make an allowable future valuation for present day carbon sequestration in corporate statements of earnings. If set properly, many corporations would put their research departments to work towards reducing its carbon footprint. The costs for technology used in presently available mitigation methods begins to drop almost immediately; and focused ingenuity begins to create better mousetraps.
Contemporary Conservatism has wrapped themselves in the mantle of Christian Fundamentalism, and far too many members of that group believe hell-in-a-handbasket is a God Given Inevitability. Maybe the time has come to wean the real libertarians from their conservative dependencies.
I oppose cap and trade for the reasons I pointed out above - they will inevitably work to enrich sunset industries at the expense of growing ones. A tax would be more effective. Not quite sure of the purpose of this, except maybe to vent. Nevertheless, since you bring up the religion angle here, let me suggest that man caused Global Warming seems to be becoming the religion of the left these days. And since it is in its infancy, and is insecure about its legitimacy, it strikes out to silence any critics.
What I find interesting is that it seems like the weaker the scientific background, the quicker people seem to be to declare that the debate is over, consensus is complete, and man caused global warming is going to ruin the Earth. All of course led by a man who appears to have barely passed what appear to have been his two bone-head (i.e. science for non-science majors) science courses in college (my memory is a C- and a D+), and then went on to divinity school. The obvious point being that he is likely much better schooled in religion than in science, which may be why this GW movement is starting to look more like the former than the later.
Bruce: The questions of whether global warming is man made and the question of whether it actually exists and whether we should try to do anything about it are separate, right? So we could even conclude that global warming isn't man made, but that it is happening and it's a bad thing that we should try to avoid (comparison: we note a comet is about to smash into the earth -- not a man-made problem, but something we should try to stop).
I just think that we are jumping way too fast from the point where there is some evidence that man may cause some of the global warming that may be going on right now, to spending trillions of dollars to overcome that - whether the money is spent directly by the government, through some sort of cap and trade system, or through taxation.
I would suggest that in reality, right now we don't really know:
- whether the climate is really warming up
- how much warming is human caused
- how much of that is due to CO2 emissions,
- how much of that we could eliminate,
- how much that would cost
- who is going to pay for it
- who is going to free ride (i.e. China, Russia, India..)
- is it really bad?
Remember, the Earth has been hotter and it has been cooler with man on it. What is the optimum temperature? Mother Nature doesn't seem to know. Do we?
Even supposing this were true - it ignores the fact that the reason behind malaria being endemic in Africa has less to do with climate and more to do with economics. For example if they could afford A/C they could shut the windows and doors at night when they go to sleep - the time when the mosquitoes are biting. Furthermore applying a weight to the US economy wouldn't help Africa - it would just drive their countries down too.
Mr. Hayden has the KEY question: We have heard, over and over, that GW is a crisis of unimaginable proportions. But nobody, but nobody, has asked the question why? Of course, an unlimited process of never-ending warming could be inconvenient. But the realistic scenarios, which include ranges seen in historical times (Roman Warm Period, Medieval Warm Period) have been generally beneficial. The Little Ice Age is generally seen as a Bad Thing except by those who like Currier and Ives pictures of snow-covered farm buildings.
More warmth means more evaporation which means more rain. Would a couple of more inches of rain per year, and a degree less cold in the winter, make, say, North Dakota agriculturally productive?
Besides, the global warming on Mars sort of cinches the anthropogenic argument. Not.
I never cease to be amazed that all the talk is about (1) making vehicles more fuel efficient, (2) trading in carbon caps that will do nothing in reality to reduce carbon output, except enrich some big corporations on paper, (3) improving the pollution filters for coal plants, and (4) wait until some time in the future for some new technology we cannot yet conceive of to come rescue us.
Does it take an autistic mind to see the obvious? Take a look at the old Jim Crow Southern States that out down racial civil rights, and today one can see these same states are resoundingly putting down disability civil rights by protecting the southern States' dominance of paper and pulp mills. Paper and pulp mills, the ones that make all that hard copy paper that runs the Southern States' court systems are enromous contributors to global warming.
For example, these paper and pulp mills are regulated by the EPA for belching out numerous air and water pollutants that wreck harm on humans and wildlife. I recently read that the average wage of a paper and pulp mill worker is a little over $18.00 per hour.
I am still calculating the carbon footprint based on hard copy paper usage and vehicle trips emissions of eveery Southern States' lawyers, although likely the carbin footprint differs in some other areas of the Nation.
Like California, Florida has been overrun by tourists and gridlocked roads, and a Florida State Courts policy effectively aimed at increasing the number of vehicle trips to clerks offices for filing pleadings and to attend even the most insignificant of hearings. The Florida Bar has a tradition of inceasing such vehicle trips as well, by requiring Florida Bar members to attend board of Governors committee meetings in person requiring travel as far away as Key West.
The obvious no brainer is we already have the technology available to get global warming climate change carbon emissions under control -- it is called electronic communication formats over the Internet superhighway.
If there is one really good thing President Bush has stood for in his administration, it is his efforts and the united effort of many of his executive agencies to bring this e-Internet electronic format of communication into every household, business, and government entity. just take a look at the ambitions evident on e.Strategy.gov.
Electronic format Internet communications cost pennies; vehicle trips and hard copy paper sent via regular U.S. Mail are exorbitant when compelled to be used by the millions of people in this Nation. America can no longer afford the waste such hard copy paper and regular U.S. Mail and millions of vehicle trips are costing, when there is a simple, efficient, and very low cost alternative -- the electronic Internet.
The added benefit is millions of America's most disabled citizens already use assistive technologies requiring the electronic Internet infrustructure to bring them into the economic mainstream of American society -- screen readers and voice recognition systems, for example. And there lies another hidden but enormous cost on America -- having to warehouse and pay for millions of America's most disabled citizens to lie idle at taxpayer expense, when they could be very productive workers for American business. Just look at the $3 Million cost over the lifetime of every autistic for warehousing, multiplied by 1 in 155 Americans born having autism, when the alternative is autistics who regularly communicate via the electronic internet format could earn income and productivity gains to business, thereby solving yet another unnecessary budget drain.
The problem is, as exemplified by the current President of The Florida Bar, the traditionalists in the legal profession and Florida's State Courts and Bar Examiners believe in a carbon emission luxury hard copy paper, regular U.S, Mail, and vehicle trip world.
As the President of the Florida Bar stated at The Florida Bar's recent Annual Meeting, the reason he feels The Florida Bar and Courts can discriminate against disabled assistive technology users and continue belching out more than their fair share of carbon emissions is because "I just don't feel comfortable using computers or the Internet."
If a real study were performed on this carbon reduction idea, requiring use of the electronic Internet superhighway in all instances possible to eliminate unnecessary hard copy paper, regular U.S. Mail (including vehicle trips associatyed therewith), and the endless millions of vehicle trips to and fro, would no doubt result in ENORMOUS reductions in America's carbon emissions.
But, getting back to the fact that the Southern Jim Crow States have a thriving paper and pulp mill industry that pays better than the average wage most Americans earn, it appears the resistance seen in Florida alone is designed to place blockades on the Internet superhighway to protect the wages and profits of provate paper and pulp mill companies.
And this gets us to the dormant Commerce Clause, and the fact that if these traditionalists in Florida do not change their ways, they will be singing "The Times They Are A Changin' -- Bob Dylan.
How about a 20 MPH basic speed limit for all road vehicles? That would allow for inexpensive, ultralight vehicles, discourage excessive driving, and save about 40,000 lives a year. If you want to go fast, you can take a train.
I commute 13 miles a day to work on the freeway, and my average speed isn't much higher than that anyway. Having to go 20 mph in a car designed for 80 is ridiculously wasteful.
I have proposed that idea many times under my discussion of attorney reciprocity now for the great Northward migration coming out of Florida when the sea levels rise. So far, this bit of insight has not gained any popularity, and those affected or potentially affected in Florida still think they need to abolish reciprocity with all other States' Bars because the migrations will always head South.
As I said, they are still be sitting round their Bar Annual Meeting tables singing "The Times They Are A Changin' -- Bob Dylan.
How about a 20 MPH basic speed limit for all road vehicles? That would allow for inexpensive, ultralight vehicles, discourage excessive driving, and save about 40,000 lives a year. If you want to go fast, you can take a train.
I commute 13 miles a day to work on the freeway, and my average speed isn't much higher than that anyway. Having to go 20 mph in a car designed for 80 is ridiculously wasteful."
Of course, a communication trip on the Internet superhighway that can elimiate all those carbon emissions is so lightening fast one's communication can travel around the world in mere seconds.
Unimaginative? Save that description for your archaic resistence to change.
The problem with this noble idea (and it would seem like a good idea, really), is that paper and pulp mills production of hard paper copy usage would just increase. Do you know the United States is the #1 user of hard copy paper by a huge amount as compared to the rest of the world? And the United States is also a huge paper exporter. I think this great idea would backfire, unfortunately.
"Or, some scientists are proposing dumping something in the oceans that reduces the global temperature, and that would apparently cost a small fraction of what is planned here."
What, ice cubes?
I don't agree. Computers are getting cheaper every year. The electronic Internet superhighway is the best possible (and existing) solution to reduce carbon emissions.
Less vehicle trips = less gas usage. Less hard copy paper = less pulp and paper mills belching air and water carbon emissions. It has a ring to it -- Mass. v. EPA.
Oh Geez. Climate change brings them all out of the closet, and now an emotional appeal against carbon reductions based on a McCarthy-era Red Scare. Next, Bar Examiners will be screening out applicants who advicate reduction of carbon emissions by reviving the old "communist party" case law.
Sort of a security blanket -- when we need to move forward, the only secure thing to do is move backward.
Mandating usage of the electronic Internet superhighway for all communications, court filings, etc., meetings via web cam, etc.
IIRC that was one of the chief criticisms of the Stern Report that many of the “costs” that were being attributed to global warming were actually demographic in nature – e.g. greater hurricane damage not so much because of an increase in the number and/or intensity of hurricanes but more so because there would be more people and development in areas where hurricanes are likely to occur.
I think part of the problem may be that so many people have been told since they were young that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” that the idea that in some cases it may actually make more sense to wait until a problem has materialized rather than try to prevent it is so counter-intuitive that it’s difficult for some to really wrap their minds around it.
IMO it would be best to focus on those policies which make sense in their own right such as helping the Indians and Chinese adopt cleaner coal technology, reducing methane emissions (which pretty much pay for themselves), or going after air pollutants that are harmful regardless of whether they lead to AGW. I’m not a fan of committing to a cap-and-trade system for CO2 because the “costs” as calculated in the Stern Report tend to be exaggerated and it would almost certainly be harmful to our economy to subsidize sunset industries at the expense of sunrise industries.
However technology is constantly evolving and as we become wealthier, things have a way of becoming cheaper. Pushing for the things that make sense now and adopting new policies for what is a long-term problem as they each justify themselves on their merits makes the most sense.
Most folks hear about human-caused ''global warming'' on the news, along with all the scaremongering, and simply assume that it exists. Then, like two terrified old ladies in a dark room discussing the black cat in the room, they are astonished when the light comes on -- and there is no cat in the room.
The chart above proves conclusively that CO2 has nothing to do with the Earth's temperature. There is no correlation at all. None. Nada. N-O-N-E.
It's indicative of the deliberate deception of the Gorebot contingent that the Sun's influence on climate is just about 100% discounted by the Gorons. Why do they lie about it? Because if they admitted the truth, Fat Albert's self-dealing carbon credit scam would unravel, and the Gorebot's loss of prestige might even cost him the Nobel he's been salivating over.
Finally, for those interested in the scientific accuracy of recording sensors, check out this site. As a metrology engineer, I am shocked that the Stern report would refer to these sensors as accurate. They're not.
AGW global warming is a crock, folks. CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature. And that's the truth.
Remember, we are talking potentially trillions of dollars here. That is a big number by almost everyone's point of view. And that is why I am suggesting that spending that much on reducing man caused global warming is likely to crowd out other uses of capital that might be more beneficial to mankind as a whole.
An example of argument based in ??? Fact? Reason? What?
But the major point was that if there really is a problem with global warming due to increased human emissions of CO2, then there are potentially a large number of solutions, above and beyond the obvious ones that we usually hear of, such as reducing our carbon footprint. The above scheme for cooling the ocean is just one of them. If the goal is to offset global warming, then, fine, do it, but find the most economical way of doing it, and that is highly unlikely to be what has been pushed on us.
Before I accepted this conclusion, I would first note that the Russians do not have a warm water port, are largely landlocked, and I would also want to see what their insurers (e.g. Lloyds) are saying about the coastal properties they do own. THAT is a more accurate basis of predication than some say so about what the Russians do or do not think, with no citation to who thinks it or why.
Bruce, I like you a lot, and I am not trying to give you a hard time on your maintaining a denialist stance even when the handwriting is on the wall, but I would invite you to spend some time on Florida's coastal land this summer during July-August and the intensity of the HEAT. You likely would quickly change your mind.
That's a fair argument, but such idealism has not been my experience in the decisionmaking of the state or federal courts of the deep South. Have you been to Florida recently and seen the plowing over of natural habitat that is happening here due to the population explosion and the cutting of forests?
I would only wish that a permitting/licensing process could offer deterrence, but I do not think that is reality. The pro-business paper and pulp mill industry in the Southern States is pretty powerful, and no need to worry about them coming onto private land of other people or public land -- they can buy up all the land themselves.
Do you know how much paper each lawyer and each court in the State of Florida uses in a year? How many trees it takes to meet that need? You would be quite surprised.
And that is leaving out all the vehicle trips.
I do think that if you pushed it hard enough, you could get the cours in Florida to start accepting FAXed pleadings, etc. In order to appear more environmentally sensitive, etc., the courts here in CO have mandated that all pleadings be on recycled paper. Since, at least for me, recycled paper is more expensive, I have a separate printer set up just for printing stuff for the courts here.
My point though is that attorneys, by and large, seem like a fairly environmentally conscious bunch. And that probably applies even in Florida. So, if you make good enough environmental arguments, you should ultimately prevail, though it may take some time. And the nice thing about your project is that it makes sense environmentally, regardless of whether man caused global warming is a problem that needs solving or not.
I should also note though that acceptance of FAXes by courts can be a pain. The Summit County (CO) bar association bought a FAX machine for the combined state courts in Breckenridge, and the courts refused to accept FAXed pleadings on it, even when other counties were accepting such. There, it was more of a question of convenience on the part of the attorneys, instead of miles traveled, since most attorneys in the county are within 15 miles of the court house. But trying to get to Breckenridge by a deadline in ski season can be problematic, with a trip that takes 15 minutes in the best of times, taking an hour or more at the worst.
You get an immediate gain of around 5% efficiency for zero cost.
Until the Gorons are willing to take that baby step, it would be insane to take any of the other steps they propose.
And, to 'a knight,' why shouldn't other posters make fun of Gore? He's a con artist.
I am usually a critic of the President, but on the point of finding solutions to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming, that has the additional benefit of opening the doors to freedom and personal liberty, the Bush Administration's move toward electronic formats on the Internet superhighway is probably his best legacy of guaranteeing freedom.
If it were not for the Bush Administration policies in this regard, see e-Strategy.gov and the Sec. 508 access improvements on almost every federal agency Internet website, we would all be chained to a life in a paperstack dungeon.
aye-yie-yie. Where does one start?
Fax???????
Lets compare the access format of fax to electronic email or CM/ECF type filing systems.
Fax: comes out of the fax machine in almost illegible small print hard paper copy print. Such format does not have accessibility feature built into the hard paper copy sheet to: (1) operate assistive technology enlargment/reduction features necessary for autism, head injuries, vision impairments; (2) operate video-audio files with or without captioning necessary for deaf opr hearing impaired people; (3) operate assistive technology color contrast features necessary for many disabilities, including vision impairments and scotopic sensitivities; (4) operate in an accessible fashioon to the expandible text fields required for voice recognition software, or operate in many circumstances with screen readers.
Accessible electronic formats: To see a good example, see the United States Supreme Court opinions, OT 2007, that include features to be able to copy-paste (reduces the necessity for keystrokes to accommodate mobility impaired people), does not interfere with voice recognition when pasted into a Word document and the parts of the sentence or paragraph surrounding the pasted quote are spoken through the microphone to the computer and converted to text via Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking or L&H Voice Xpress software. Most email formats are accessible; pdf is not, unless of the type used by the Supreme Court opinions. Screen readers have several other accessibility requirements, and can be tripped up by graphics without text. Windows provides numerous other accessibility features, enlargement/reduction, different cursor speeds and sizes and contrasts, customized color contrast settings, a magnifier, audio-sounds for certain functions, etc.
I have pushed the Florida Courts System hard to get this infrustructure accessibility, but the old Guard refuses to budge. Why? They feel "unconfortable using computers and the internet."
How is THAT a legitimate excuse? Maybe attorney licensure should require computer and Internet knowhow.
aye-yie-yie. Where does one start?
Fax???????
Lets compare the access format of fax to electronic email or CM/ECF type filing systems.
Fax: comes out of the fax machine in almost illegible small print hard paper copy print. Such format does not have accessibility feature built into the hard paper copy sheet to: (1) operate assistive technology enlargment/reduction features necessary for autism, head injuries, vision impairments; (2) operate video-audio files with or without captioning necessary for deaf opr hearing impaired people; (3) operate assistive technology color contrast features necessary for many disabilities, including vision impairments and scotopic sensitivities; (4) operate in an accessible fashioon to the expandible text fields required for voice recognition software, or operate in many circumstances with screen readers.
Accessible electronic formats: To see a good example, see the United States Supreme Court opinions, OT 2007, that include features to be able to copy-paste (reduces the necessity for keystrokes to accommodate mobility impaired people), does not interfere with voice recognition when pasted into a Word document and the parts of the sentence or paragraph surrounding the pasted quote are spoken through the microphone to the computer and converted to text via Dragon Dictate Naturally Speaking or L&H Voice Xpress software. Most email formats are accessible; pdf is not, unless of the type used by the Supreme Court opinions. Screen readers have several other accessibility requirements, and can be tripped up by graphics without text. Windows provides numerous other accessibility features, enlargement/reduction, different cursor speeds and sizes and contrasts, customized color contrast settings, a magnifier, audio-sounds for certain functions, etc.
I have pushed the Florida Courts System hard to get this infrustructure accessibility, but the old Guard refuses to budge. Why? They feel "uncomfortable using computers and the internet."
How is THAT a legitimate excuse? Maybe attorney licensure should require computer and Internet knowhow.
And beyond what I mentioned above, fax machines can be a real problem in other respects. I remember a high powered divorce involving an attorney we worked on, with a medium-sized law firm on the other side, and on a daily basis it seems like that fax machine spit out literally thousands of pages of hard copy paper. It was astounding.
Bruce, do you practice in federal court? Have you used the CM/ECF electronic filing system? I am just wondering, because a person can truly file a pleading in electronic format anytime, anywhere. We have done it from our leaky vessel at 11:59 pm. Just do up a pleading on the voice recognition assistive computer, using the Windows accessibility features, when finished, just drop it thru the Adobe Creative Suite pdf (unlimited document conversions for $10 per month), and then *bingo* download it to the CM/ECF via wireless Internet access, and when filed, everyone is automatically served.
It is really a revolutionary change, and for the better, in the old way of doing things.
Actually, it was some sort of metal, if my memory serves me right, and the intent, I think, was to change the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean."
Likely some sort of reflective metal.
It was a kind of iron filing. The plan was to accelerate the growth of some kind of algae which is particularly good at converting CO2. Apparently iron is necessary in some part of the life cycle and is thought to be the limiting factor. I've heard it works in limited tests.
I guess when their mind is made up, it closes up tight. Either that, or Fat Albert the Gorebot has strange hypnotic powers over some gullible folks.
The problem is that this chart really doesn't tell us much about the effects of greenhouse gasses in the past couple thousand years. Throughout the vast time period covered by your chart, the composition of the earth's atmosphere changed fairly drastically; landmasses shifted and reformed, new life forms arose, catastrophic events occured affecting climate, etc. etc. Plus, the measurement techniques are still questioned and highly speculative.
http://tinyurl.com/27rps9
And please, folks, there is no such thing as a "Medieval Warming Period." You're being bamboozled. Look it up.
Sure there was. Le Roy Ladurie proved it beyond question.
I don't believe that's true. Ladurie used wine harvest records to chart what he believed were climatic effects on human activities during the medieval period. But in fact there was no consistently "global" warming during this period, and even Ladurie's "periods" of warming and cooling (good and bad harvests) tend to run in rather dramatic 20-30 year cycles.
It offers several points to address the current issue:
One is--things were warmer.
Another is--things were better at the margins in northern Europe.
Yet another is that nowhere have things been shown to be worse.
Last, it wasn't anthropogenic.
Most lastest is the occasional article in some obscure scientific journal with readership in the low thousands. Where the researcher, looking for something in particular, or just trying to find what was happening, finds proxies for MWP in Siberia or South Africa.
No, I won't link. You know as well as I do what's happening and no amount of linking would change your mind.
Richard - thanks about the iron filings. Don't know if it would work, but it would be a lot cheaper if it did. And what could be more natural than dumping one of the elements from the periodic chart into the ocean? Ok, you need to dig it up first, purify it, and then make it into small enough particles, but still, an argument could be made...
But then, arguing about this sort of things with militants doesn't work. Reminds me of a story from about 30 years ago. Friends owned a brick company and were trying to expand their house in the mountains. The town of Dillon, CO rejected their application because their materials weren't natural looking. They responded, what is more natural than brick? You take mud, mix it up, cut it into rectanglar blocks, dry them in the dry Colorado air, bake them in a kiln, and, voila, bricks. And how do you make lumber? You cut down trees, cut them into rectangular blocks, dry them in a kiln, and you have lumber. Somehow, lumber is "natural", and bricks are not. Go figure. It appears to revolve around the extra drying in the sun step. The friends never did convince the city to approve their plans because they weren't natural enough looking.
Seems I recall a line from some teen flick. The protagonist was trying to get in with the Kool Kids.
"But I even have stone-washed jeans!"
Sneering. "Those were ARTIFICIAL stones."
It is difficult to parody the excessively precious.
Global Warming advocates need to be very careful their advocacy is not used to create more train wrecks like the one cited below.
What about the land?
And if events in northwest Europe were not global, they were certainly matched in many parts of the globe. Notably, Reid Bryson found the same climate variation in the Southwest of what is now the United States even earlier than Le Roy Ladurie found his for Europe. See 'Climates of Hunger,' if you can find a copy. It's a rarity.
Similar, but less certain, echoes of the warming have been found all over -- Africa, Australia etc.
The great thing about Le Roy Ladurie and Bryson is that they discovered direct evidence of past climate. No proxies.
Evolving Scientific Studies have shown that there have been errors in the past, that there has indeed been invalid data input, and imperfect modeling systems used. It has also shown that it is very probable the worst of the predictions are not to be believed. What they have not shown though, is that there will be no drastic climate change in the foreseeable future. In fact, new studies indicate that climate change is happening presently.
My personal belief is that when the natural heat sink capacities inherent within the icecaps are used up, the noticeable changes will accelerate rapidly. The Northern Hemisphere's polar ice cap is melting at an alarming rate. Can you conceive of the human misery that will result from a complete shift in the oceans' currents if a northwest passage is truly punched through? The Southern Hemisphere's icecap is not melting at predicable levels. Again, data must be analysed, variables recalculated, possibly new ones promulgated and input into newer, more realistic modeling systems. This is how science works. It has always been mostly best guess calculations based upon the known and quantifiable. There will never be an end to the discovery of knowledge; there will always be darkness at the periphery, but science has proven right at one hell of a greater frequency that auguring goat entrails.
Since I am betting the future on it, I'll the the former over the later.
The argument regarding manmade or natural causes is a straw man, of nugatory value. In the end it does not matter what the source cause for humanity's die-off was if it happens.
My mind is quite open on the topic. I'm just not as convinced as you are that the LCO offers a definitive corollary to what we may be experiencing today.
There are two issues in your response. One is that the MWP was local. Other posters have mentioned discoveries proving it was worldwide. But, having had to retreat from the localized issue, your mind is not changed. I have seen other evidence, but, as I say, there's no point in providing it to your open mind because...
The other issue is whether the MWP and by extension other climate changes have anything to tell us. You don't think so.
That's absurd. We know, and you accept that warming means...warmer. So it was warmer. Was it worse? You know of nothing which can demonstrate it was worse, and, in fact you know of much which demonstrates the MWP was a boon in the areas which have been studied the most.
So, is the new warming going to be worse when the old warming was better? That would be an interesting argument.
The MWP was not anthropogenic, which demonstrates the possibility that the current warming, should it be happening, is not anthropogenic. The burden of proof would be on those who claim it is.
You may refuse to address this out loud, but that refusal surely isn't supposed to influence the rest of us.
Note the citation at the bottom of the chart. The chart is a visual representation of the data published in the AAAS publication Science. 'K?
Grover also complains about the time scale in the chart. OK, here's a chart with a very short x-axis. Take a look. Again, there is no correlation between CO2 and temp. It's a chart of the Medieval Warm Period, which was a global event.
And for those who still fantasize that CO2 is causing global warming, check out this interesting chart. Notice the extremely strong correlation between the Sun's changing irradiance and Earth's temperature. The Maunder minimum in the late 1600's is known as the ''Little Ice Age,'' a time when the Thames river routinely froze over. The Sun's dimming was the cause, not CO2.
Also notice that from 1900 - 2000, solar irradiance increased substantially -- directly correlated with the Earth's 0.6 degree C temperature rise.
Finally, it should be pointed out that the Gorebot always cherry picks his locations to scare people with his bogus AGW globaloney conjecture [similar to the reckless pontificators on both sides who point to the weather and claim global warming/cooling].
Gore selected the Arctic rather than the Antarctic, because currently, parts of the Arctic are losing some glacier ice through natural processes. But Fat Albert never mentions the Antarctic. The thickness of the Antarctic ice layer made by the Altimeter Radar Satellite indicates that the Eastern Antarctic Ice Shield has been growing by almost 48 billion metric tons per year for the past fifteen years.
If the Earth's ice caps were melting, as Gore mendaciously claims, then sea levels would be rising dramatically. But the sea level has not increased a single centimeter in the last 150 years. That is another lie regularly put forth by the UN gorons.
The scare tactic of global warming is directly connected with the UN kleptocrats' stated intent to impose a ''World Tax,'' which would fleece U.S. taxpayers out of $100 billion per year -- for starters. That is the motivation for the globaloney scare. Money. BIG money. And the U.S. is the mark.
Don't be fooled.
That's brutal.
Where's your sympathy for all the folks looking for ways to get Joe Lunchbucket to live according to the dictates of his betters? Don't you have any concern for them?
You're right.
My insincere apologies to the gorons and UN rent seekers.
Not, it's not 'K. The chart is a composite of two separate data sets and has NOT been peer-reviewed, as far as I can tell. "Conclusion and Interpretation by Nasif Nahle." Scotese is actually a proponent of global warming, as is Pagani, who has argued that CO2 levels indeed have an effect on climate, but not in the way your composite chart suggests. Look him up. HIS work has been peer-reviewed and suggests things you wouldn't agree with at all.
Your second chart is very interesting. I see stable levels of CO2 and well-spaced climate cycles until about 1800, then a drastic increase in CO2 accompanied by wild fluctuations in climate cycles ending in a huge rise in global temperature which has not yet ended--which is exactly what the previous chart didn't show. But perhaps I'm misreading it. It shows the steep rise in GLOBAL temps during the MWP, but there have been revisions to the data since then. And, yes, I know it's all a vast conspiracy to deny the MWP or erase it altogether. ;-) Forgive me if I withhold judgement on that.
There's no end of web sites making the claims you make. I've read reasonable rebuttals of most, if not all, of them, but am reserving my opinion for the moment. I did not "retreat" from the MWP issue--there is a great deal of evidence pointing toward the fact that it was NOT global. I'm sorry, but you'll have to live with the fact that someone who is not prone to extreme points of view disagrees with you. You seem to think that it's all about money and conspiracies and big fat jerks, that anyone with common sense can see that it's anything BUT anthropogenic or even a problem at all. You're certainly entitled to that opinion but I don't necessarily agree.
BTW. Who here presumes they'll be with the Kennedys insisting that the proles pay the price while they insist on making sure the wind farms don't ruin their nice seascapes?
Lots of luck, guys.
No one here on Earth, as far as I know.
Also, a link to some of Mark Pagani's work:
http://news.mongabay.com/2006/1207-petm.html
I haven't read anything that points to one single explanation, if in fact the phenomenon is real. Perhaps you have one.
Even the raging fanatics are claiming a rise of no more than .006/degrees/yr since 1900. That assumes that 1900 was not cooler than 1800, which is not known but probably incorrect.
It is more probable than not that the increase in temperature, if there has been any at all, is less than .006/degrees/yr.
That is undetectable.
For all we know, the next ice age has already begun. If it has, we are not capable of measuring the net annual change, which is on the order of .0005/degrees/yr.
I was simply referring to Smokey's linked graph as a pictorial representation, not to actual numbers. I made no comment on the veracity of the graph, merely what it appeared to show. "Spike" would probably have been the more appropriate term, but regardless, it wasn't my link and I make no claims for it.
Therefore, any warming here must be anthropogenic.
Most of the approximately 2,500 UN/IPCC functionaries that sell AGW alongside Al Gore are not scientists. They are bureaucrats with an agenda. However, there are now over 19,000 scientists who have signed the Petition Project, which casts major doubt on the AGW conjecture.
The fact that Mars is warming in lock step with Earth is only part of the globaloney deconstruction. Neptune's moon Triton; Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and even Pluto show that warming is occurring simultaneously throughout the Solar System. Is Grover claiming that each of these events is coincidental??
Of the scientists who study paleoclimatology, the vast majority reject the Gorebot's AGW conjecture as unscientific rabble-rousing. But when the AGW religion overcomes common sense, there is not much that reasonable people can do to point out the numerous and overwhelming facts that contradict the Church of Global Warming.
The AGW scamsters constantly use ad hominem arguments rather than debating the science. A good example is the use of constant attacks against climatologist Richard Lindzen of M.I.T. Their ad hominem attacks, rather than facing a formal scientific debate on the facts, makes clear that the gorons' entire point of view is political, not scientific. If Dr. Lindzen was misrepresenting climate science, M.I.T. -- arguably the world's top engineering school -- would never allow its reputation to be sullied by condoning scientific fraud. Lindzen, at the very least, would lose his Department of Meteorology Chair.
Sorry, Grover. With the current facts, the preponderance of evidence forces thinking people to conclude that the Gore+UN/IPCC folks, who are attempting to rile the public with their incessant scaremongering, have a hidden agenda. As H.L. Mencken correctly observed:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
First we're told the medieval warming didn't exist, and then, when I offer evidence that it did, we're told well, it didn't exist in the way . . . well, I don't know in what way it didn't exist.
Then we're told there was a huge increase in global temperature, and when I point out that there wasn't, we're told that, well, it only looked huge.
I'll stick to all my statements. I wish the AGW crowd would do the same.
Clear, now?
In fact, Harry, the only claim I've made is that there is strong evidence that the MWP was not global and that is is not a sure-fire rebuttal to the other science that exists. That's all. All these other claims and theories come from you guys, not me. My personal observation is that they originate from a handful of web sites and are then repeated ad nauseum as talking points without any real understanding of what they mean or how much they're supported by the actual science.
Smokey's graph is a case in point. This is not peer-reviewed material, as he claimed. Rather than reply to that, he launches into a rant about conspiracies, ad hominem slurs and fat slobs. I offered what seemed to be an obvious interpretation of his other graph, but again no response. I've pointed out before the doubts about the "petitions" he links to, but he didn't have any response to that either. All I get is a rant about how stupid I am to believe Al Gore, when I haven't even mentioned Al Gore or seen his movie or even expressed an opinion on Al Gore.
Your original statement was, "Since the climate isn't changing because of us, we don't need to do anything. That's the really cheap solution." That's fine, Harry, you stick to that. And I'll stick to my statements:
1) The MWP doesn't debunk the current theories about global warming.
2) Smokey's graphs are not peer-reviewed and don't tell us anything about global climate change at this time.
3) Repetitive talking points which have been repeated responded to, rebutted or debunked are boring.
4) Paranoia is not my thing.
Smokey, if I thought you applied that across the board, I'd believe that you really meant it.
The MWP may not debunk current AGW since we don't know its cause, except that it wasn't anthropogenic.
I've seen reports that it was global, or at least the rest of the globe got warmer at the same time.
The point about the MWP is that, since it happened without our help, the same thing can happen again. See, btw. the Roman Warm Period and the Holocene Maximum.
But, if you dismiss that as inconvenient, you still have to deal with the points that nobody's been able to make out that the MWP or the HM were bad for anybody.
Richard, it isn't "inconvenient" for me that the Earth's climate has undergone changes in the past--for the simple reason that I personally don't hold a firm position in the global warming debate.
The question, to my mind, isn't really whether or not we survived or adapted to climate changes in the past. Obviously we did. The question is, are we experiencing an acceleration of climate change that may *exceed* what has occurred in the past? Are we contributing to that problem--and if so, can we do anything about it? And can we adapt to those changes with the same alacrity we did a thousand years ago?
Obviously some historical climatic shifts have been beneficial for mankind, others less so, but in any event they fell within a range that allowed or even enabled the human race to prosper. But also bear in mind that earlier human populations responded to climate changes by adapting their lifestyles or moving to another place. A thousand years ago, it was not unusual for whole populations to simply pick up and go when the climate changed for the worse, or when natural resources were used up. Today we have lost much, if not all, of that flexibility. We have populated the planet to the extent that a significant rise in sea levels or a change in growing seasons could have very unpleasant effects on large portions of the human race.
I am neither an alarmist nor a "Gorebot" and frankly I haven't lost much sleep over the matter, but I think it's worth considering what we may be doing to ourselves and what, if anything, we can do about it. (I'm also old enough to rather miss the days when those in power encouraged us to care about our surroundings, but that's another debate.) I do admit to a certain amount of irritation when it comes to dishonest statements, facile putdowns and the mangling or distorting of what limited information is available to us at this time. The fact that the Earth has undergone a progression of climate changes over the eons doesn't render the current debate moot, IMO.
Of course it does. If we act, the climate will change. If we don't act, the climate will change. We are sure of that.
We just don't know in which direction.
So, not acting is cheaper.
Instead of debating the total lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature, you try to play the 'peer-review' card from the bottom of the deck. That won't fly. As I clearly explained upthread, the data in the posted graph was taken from a peer-reviewed article in Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which referees its articles prior to publication. I'm not just winging it here. I have subscribed to the AAAS, and received their publication for more than twenty years.
Furthermore, peer rreview is no guarantee of anything. Its purpose is to save embarassment for the scientific publication in question, which uses referees to check that someone hasn't done a Pons and Fleischman cold fusion scam on them, thus impacting the publication's credibility.
Albert Einstein’s revolutionary 1905 manuscript Annus Mirabilis wasn’t peer reviewed. Neither was Watson and Crick’s 1951 paper on DNA structure. Conversely, the work of Jan Hendrik Schön was peer reviewed and only later discovered to be a spectacular fraud.
Schön, a former Bell Labs scientist, authored or co-authored one research paper every 8 days in 2001. An astonishing 15 of Schön’s papers were accepted for publication in Nature and Science, two of the most respected and influential journals in the scientific community. But after sufficient questioning by other physicists, Schön was proved a fake.
The fact is, you just plain don't want to admit that that chart, which disproves the central pillar of the AGW fanatics, is legit. Yet you profess to be 'open minded.' If you admitted that the data was accurate, then your AGW CO2/temperature conjecture would crash and burn.
Instead, you complained that the chart covered too much of the Earth's history. So I provided you with another chart with a very short x-axis, showing the very same lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature.
I also provided sources showing that the entire Solar System is warming simultaneously with the Earth. You can't poke holes in that fact, either. In fact, your arguments for AGW amount to personal opinion based on faith that the Gorebot has the answers that no one else has. You're fooling no one here by pretending to be open minded and undecided on the issue.
I can't make headway with a closed-minded AGW fanatic who argues about peer-review, while at the same time refers to mass circulation articles by non-climatologists as his authority. That is exactly what the gorons do. How are you any different?
Or to what extent, or at what pace.
"So, not acting is cheaper."
That would depend on what, if anything, we can truly predict about human effects on the climate.
*You* lead with the peer-review card, Smokey.
Pagani's work is indeed peer-reviewed, and it does not lead to the conclusion you want. The composite chart you linked to does not tell the whole story about CO2 and climate change. Pagani compiled his CO2 data with a view to making a rather different point.
"Furthermore, peer review is no guarantee of anything."
Then why bring it up in the first place??
"The fact is, you just plain don't want to admit that that chart, which disproves the central pillar of the AGW fanatics, is legit."
It doesn't disprove anything, any more than the MWP disproves the possibility that were may be headed for an anomalous climate change brought about by a combination of factors specific to our era.
"So I provided you with another chart with a very short x-axis, showing the very same lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature."
That's not what I see on that chart. Can you explain the relative stability of CO2 levels, which then rise steeply, accompanied by an abrupt change in the frequency of climate fluctuations? Do you not see an anomaly there? It's looks clear enough to me.
"I also provided sources showing that the entire Solar System is warming simultaneously with the Earth. You can't poke holes in that fact, either."
I certainly can. First of all you linked to an interview with a scientist whose ideas are by no means confirmed. Second, there's no proof that the *entire* solar system is warming. Third, other explanations have been put forth for the climate changes occurring on Jupiter, Pluto, etc. Fourth, there seems to be conflicting data about the level of solar irradiance and activity in recent years. So, no, you have not "shown" that the entire solar system is warming. And even if that were the case, it seems to me that we would still want to look at our own planet and atmosphere, and determine if we are exacerbating any warming trends by our own activities.
"I can't make headway with a closed-minded AGW fanatic who argues about peer-review, while at the same time refers to mass circulation articles by non-climatologists as his authority. That is exactly what the gorons do. How are you any different?"
What on earth?? You point me to a string of denialist web sites, popular newspaper articles and industry-funded think tanks, and you expect to make headway?? ;-)
Come on, Smokey. I'm neither a fanatic nor a Gorebot. I've read and seen some very reasonable-sounding people who question the lengths to which we should be alarmed about this issue. I am aware that they're not all cranks or industry-funded shills. I don't buy into the catastrophic scenario, but I'm not willing to dismiss it quite yet either--at least until I've read and heard more about it. You've made up your mind based on what I would describe as scant and misleading evidence. That's just my opinion. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to snark or sound insulting, that's just the way it appears to me. In every thread here you post that same chart, insisting that it lays the issue to rest once and for all. I don't believe it does any such thing.
If the first $20 billion worth of data won't do it for you, how much do you estimate you'll need?