Global Warming Poll

[gotmuddy]

You think the people funding these studies have no intentions of taking control of things? They already have. That is what government is about: control.

[flytyer57]

You think the people funding these studies have no intentions of taking control of things? They already have. That is what government is about: control.

Now that is starting to sound a little too paranoid.

[Al Agnew]

This is the post I have been waiting for. This is by far the best post in the thread. If this is the case(which seems to be true after reading this post), what do we do? How do we limit our economy without throwing us back into the dark ages??

BTW, no one except spiderman posted about their vehicles, should I make a spinoff thread?

Muddy, I wasn't ignoring your questions, which are the real nitty gritty on this issue. We can argue it til the cows come home without accomplishing a thing, but actually doing something about it is going to be tough. The reason I haven't answered before now is that I've been re-reading a couple of books on the subject to get ideas from people smarter than I am, and I haven't finished yet.

The thing is, we simply HAVE to get everybody, or at least a great majority of the people, on the same page. As long as we are arguing about whether human induced climate change is real with neither side having an advantage, nothing will ever get done. And it doesn't matter whether it's real or not, we're heading off a cliff anyway. You ask how we can do it without wrecking our economy, but our economy is on such fragile ground now that a wreck is almost inevitable at some point in the fairly near future. Why? Because our economy runs on fossil fuels. 85% of the oil consumed in America comes from foreign sources, and a lot of those sources are countries that are either unstable or outright enemies. We know about the Middle East and Venezuela, which combined are supplying, as I remember, about 35% of our oil. But we also get a lot of oil from Mexico, and Mexico isn't looking too stable either. But worse than that, oil is simply getting harder to find and dig out of the ground at the same time that the developing countries are demanding more and more of it. The hard fact is that over time, oil is just going to get more and more expensive because it will cost more and more to find it and get it and there will be more and more demand for it. That in itself is a recipe for economic disaster, because the oil will cost more and thus everything else will cost more. Our industrial style agriculture runs on oil. It takes oil and natural gas to make the fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides, it takes oil in vast amounts to run the machinery and get the crops to market. It also takes oil to make all the plastics we stupidly use in overpackaging. It takes vast amounts of oil to grow the monoculture corn that we use in making the corn syrup and other corn products that go into a vast number of food and non-food products, not to mention the ethanol that we have really stupidly decided to add to our gasoline. (Ethanol may or may not be a good short term help to our energy problems, but ethanol from corn most certainly is stupid when we're talking about the scale it has to be grown.) It takes oil to transport every product we buy and sell. So as the cost of oil goes up and the supply gets more shaky, we slide into deep dog doo.

We all know that coal isn't an answer. Clean coal is not going to happen in the next few years if ever, and even if we figure out how to make coal as unpolluting as possible, it's still highly destructive to get out of the ground.

So we MUST develop new energy sources. To do so in the time frame necessary, not just to stave off the worst effects of climate change but also to stave off the economic disasters that will come with scarcer and more expensive oil, we simply have to get the government involved to an extent that's comparable to what the government did in developing the atomic bomb, or the space program after the Russians launched Sputnik. We have to throw as much resources and provide incentives to encourage as much private innovation as we possibly can into a similar project for developing energy sources.

And at the same time, the government has a couple other roles, and they are to provide help and incentives with energy conservation on a grand scale, and decentralization of our energy sources. The chances are that, other than nuclear, alternative energy sources are not going to lend themselves very easily to tying into the vast power grids we have now. And even if we do, in the real world we live in now with terrorism a constant threat along with, if you buy the climate change stuff, natural disasters coming much more frequently, having all our power eggs in one basket isn't very smart, because a terrorist attack on these huge power grids is going to wreck the economy as well. So we have to start thinking about each county, each city, each industrial plant, each household, providing much of its own power. Instead of covering vast acreages of ground with solar panels or windmills in order to furnish power to the whole Midwest, we need to develop the technologies that make solar a truly viable option for your own roof, or to cover the parking lot at the local industrial plant. We need to develop the technologies and provide incentives if necessary for companies that produce waste products to use those waste products to generate power. We need to develop geothermal where it will work the best, on a household and industrial plant scale. And lots of other ways to get power generation to become decentralized. If terrorists attack the power grid, it wrecks the economy of vast regions and causes ripples across the whole country, but if terrorists attack your rooftop, it sucks for you but doesn't much bother anybody else.

People aren't going to be willing to give up their automobiles, nor to stop flying, although flying is getting to be more and more unpleasant. So one of the main thrusts of developing new energy sources is going to have to be to replace gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel. Problem is that we simply don't know when that will happen, and if it does, it will probably require a complete revamping of our fuel distribution system along with replacing all the autos we have now. It has to be done gradually, but it can't be done too gradually. Same thing with mass transportation. We're seeing with Metrolink in St. Louis that mass transit, done gradually and halfway, doesn't work well. It never pays for itself because it doesn't serve enough people when it doesn't cover everywhere in the city that people need to go. But mass transit makes sense IF it's all put together. High speed rail between cities that go to a central terminal on the outskirts of the city. Transit from those terminals to every major part of the city. Buses or trams or some kind of vehicles to take you to your individual destination from those inner hubs. It all has to work together, or it doesn't work at all. We should have high speed rail paralleling the interstate highways, with stopping points about every 50 miles or so. Trains that run 200 mph, 15 minute stop at each point to load and unload passengers, trains running one per hour during the day. It takes me around an hour and a half to get to most places in St. Louis from my rural house. I could drive to my proposed train terminal in ten minutes, take ten minutes to get on the train, the train takes 20 minutes to get to the St. Louis terminal, maybe 15 minutes wait to get on a feeder line going to the vicinity of where I want to go, then take a bus to within a block or two of my destination, which would be probably the most time consuming part of the whole thing. But it probably wouldn't take me much longer to get to where I'm going than I could do it in a car, and I wouldn't have to be driving or looking for places to park. And if it's a major St. Louis destination like the ballpark or the airport, it would take less time and trouble.

Those are just a few of the ideas. They would take a lot of government (tax) money if they are to be done as quickly as they probably need to be done, but in the end we'd come out of it economically better off, and the jobs they would provide to build the infrastructure alone would be an economic boon. Of all the stuff I've said, the best part of it is the decentralization of our energy supplies, because our energy supply system and our food system has gotten just as "too big to fail" as the banks and Wall Street were, and making them smaller makes us more secure. Problem is, our timing is bad. Really bad. We should have been working on all this since the first oil embargo back in the 1970s. Now, we're running up against time limits. Either climate change comes on fast enough to disrupt the economy, or oil gets expensive enough to disrupt the economy, before we have the chance to get it done. And right now is especially bad because our economy is already just limping along, and we're stuck in two very expensive wars that are draining resources at a continuing and alarming clip. Not to mention, there are so many vested interests that stand to lose as we turn away from fossil fuels, and they are so powerful, that getting the government to do what needs to be done is going to be well nigh impossible.

The only thing we should know is that we simply can't keep going the way we are now. Even if climate change doesn't get us, we're headed for economic disaster.

[Fly_Guy]

Bingo. We could argue about global warming/cooling/warming forever, and use valid pieces of data to support our positions.

I am 100% for clean alternative energy. Imagine a world where America lead the way in clean energy - how much (recently lost) respect would we garner for ourselves if that were to happen!? I am personally willing to pay substantially more in taxes (providing everyone else would do the same of course) to see it done. I've outfitted my home w/ those nasty little CF lightbulbs, and drive a hybrid, but right now, affordable options are limited - especially on my income. It's going to take a greater committment by our country than the scale of the space exploration program or (name your favorite war)to make it happen.

When there are affordable solar panels/shingles for our roofs, I'll buy em. I know some people who have a personal windmill to supplement their energy as well. Many many small solutions will provide the bigger solution. Good post Al.

[Zach Bearden]

New N.A.S.A. report shows increase in global warming.

Photo proof here guys! This is big stuff!

[Fly_Guy]

That looks bad indeed! Thank goodness none of those fires are in the U.S.!

[Tim Smith]

New N.A.S.A. report shows increase in global warming.

Photo proof here guys! This is big stuff!

This picture only shows half the planet burning.

NASA's data clearly shows that the ENTIRE planet is on photoshop fire (of 0.7 C).

Try again.

[Tim Smith]

Bingo. We could argue about global warming/cooling/warming forever, and use valid pieces of data to support our positions.

Agreed that the debate is secondary to action. However, it would make the policy part a lot easier the debate was being conducted between valid data and logical arguments. We're probably not going to solve this by accident.

It's going to take a greater committment by our country than the scale of the space exploration program or (name your favorite war)to make it happen.

And your point here about the size of the national response is probably right, although the market is going to have to take a much bigger role than in the space race or war. What makes it even harder than either of those, is that it's a global problem, not just a national one. That means places like China and India and Russia have to do their part as well.

But, there are signs of hope. Even fruit-loop contries like North Korea aren't entirely nuts (they didn't fire on the South Korean military exercises today and start a war), and even though there is significant cheating on the regulations, the CFC ban appears it might have been effective enough to begin closing the ozone hole.

[Zach Bearden]

That looks bad indeed! Thank goodness none of those fires are in the U.S.!

That assumption is indeed correct. But it is over the ice so somethin crazy is goin on!

This picture only shows half the planet burning.

NASA's data clearly shows that the ENTIRE planet is on photoshop fire (of 0.7 C).

Try again.

But it's the important half of the planet! It's gonna melt all our ice and we're all going to drown!!

Or evolve and gain gills

[Tim Smith]

But it's the important half of the planet! It's gonna melt all our ice and we're all going to drown!!

Or evolve and gain gills

Ah yes. You're citing the work of Dr. Kevin Costner, noted NASA Egomatician. He called and wants his movie back.