Comments GoodCheer has made

Soft Science?

jabailo:  How would you go about conducting an experiment?On Polar warming directly attributed to humans, study says posted 1 year ago 13 Responses

Oh GOD, not CHEMICALS!

"A baby's body contains nearly 300 chemical compounds by the time it takes its first breath."

So the parts of the baby that are not these 300 chemicals...  what are they made from exactly?On Companies move toward nontoxic chemicals and products posted 1 year, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Does it matter?

You're lucky if you can find a Prius, Yaris, Aveo, or Fit on a dealer's lot, meanwhile Escalades that cost $75,000 last year are selling in the high $30k's.

Does the regulation really matter?  The price of gas may drop...  to $100/barrel or $3/gal, but that will be the anomaly in the future.  Do the automakers think that Americans so quickly forget what can happen?  Will China stop growing at 11%/year?

It took 20 years after the oil shocks of the 70's for us to start thinking 10mpg was workable again.  20 years from now America will be just another player in the global petroleum market, and the supply will be much tighter (and harder to get to).

Your thoughts?On Big Auto backs off support for tighter fuel-economy standards posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses

Rental FUVs

What I find interesting in all this is that MY utopian model is that you drive as small a car as you can get away with (or bike), and on those few occasions when you might actually need 7 seats and the capacity to pull your house off its foundations...  THEN you rent one.

I.E., I would think that rental demand for FUVs could remain high.  

I suppose since FUV owners can't sell them, this isn't happening yet.On Rental-car companies struggling to meet demand for smaller cars posted 1 year, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Ecosystem limits

In the desert ecosystems where these concentrated solar thermal plants are proposed, the primary productivity of the ecosystems is (unless I'm wrong) water limited, not light limited.

I would think that the cooler temperatures in the shadows of the solar collectors would encourage primary productivity and thus carbon sequestration.  While it is true that the species that take advantage of the new conditions may be different from the native species...  well, there's this thing called global warming, and niches (and niche optimized species) are changing all over the world.  A few hundred acres of low-productivity desert is a small price to pay (if it is a 'price' at all) for displacing whoever much coal.

While I support subsidies for rooftop solar, it is not an either/or.  The money for these industrial scale solar thermal generation stations in the deserts is not coming out of public  coffers, but from venture capital.On Feds freeze new solar projects on public land, pending review posted 1 year, 5 months ago 26 Responses

Other manufacturers

For those interested, other major auto manufacturers who are coming out with EVs include

Renault (search for "Project Better Place")
Mitsubishi (MiEV)
Subaru (R1e)

And then there are the new companies:

Tesla
Aptera
GreenVehicles

And a bunch of others that are probably further from getting rubber onto the road.On Nissan wants to offer you an electric car by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 3 Responses

Confusion

Neither Toyota nor GM are working on electric cars.  They are working on PHEVs.  There is a difference between a Plug-in Hybrid-Electric Vehicle (PHEV) and an electric vehicle (EV), and that difference is an internal combustion engine.  If you have one, you're not an EV, and you need a crank-case full of oil and a tank full of gas.

I'm not advocating for one over the other, but I do wish the media could keep their definitions straight.On Nissan wants to offer you an electric car by 2010 posted 1 year, 6 months ago 3 Responses

Seals; A well-managed resource.

The analogy between the seal hunt and the whale harvest is not a good one.  Unlike the whales, the seal population is not in trouble, and is in fact one of the best managed populations of wild animals in the world.

I will leave the anthropological arguments to konklarii.  Of equal importance (I think) is the ecological one I wish to make.

I have had a similar discussion before with caniscandida about the populations of dear in dense urban areas of the US east coast.  In both cases we have to choose the cause of death of these animals.  If there is a hunt they will be killed by a hunter (which probably sucks a lot for them).  If there is no hunt the population will grow to a certain point and then will be limited by STARVATION or PREDATION (which also probably sucks a lot).  The animals will still die, but for one reason or another human societies will be worse off.

Whether or not we take an active role, we are aware of the event and the conditions that cause seal deaths, and we have control over them, which makes us responsible EITHER WAY.  While you might personally feel that the act of taking an animal's life is distasteful (I certainly do), sticking our heads in the sand and stopping the hunt will NOT improve the lot of these animals.

Saying it will is a bit like saying we SHOULD buy puppies from pet stores (from puppy mills) because they look so sad in their little cages.On Militant activists charged in seal protest posted 1 year, 7 months ago 23 Responses

A less expensive option

Rather than buying them out, simply remove FEMA flood insurance for any structure that has been rebuilt more than once in the last 20 years (or other numbers like those of your choosing).  As it is, the American taxpayer subsidizes people living in flood- and hurricane- prone areas, some of whom rebuild LITERALLY every couple years when their seaside towns get washed away.

We all benefit from having farmers living on flood-plains, but those little towns on the Gulf coast & Florida don't do much of anything for "the greater good".On Corps may buy out coastal Miss. towns, encourage residents to move inland posted 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

Is lack of awareness really the problem?

I know that some people think that global warming doesn't really exists, ....  or maybe it does exist but it surely isn't caused by anything humans do...  or maybe we are to blame but China and India are more to blame, .... or is there really anything we can do about it...  or....

But I'm not sure that anyone (at least anyone who's going to hear about this concert) is unaware of the issue.  I would like someone to convince me that this concert is going to do any good.On Have We Mentioned This Big Climate Concert? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 4 Responses

Hydrologic equilibrium

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the Kazakhs are simply building a dike to claim what little will remain of the Aral for themselves.  With the damage of irrigation in place, the supply of water is what it will be, and the amount of evaporation that will balance that water supply is determined by climate.  The Kazakhs may be supporting their fishing industry, but I don't think the action should be heralded as a great blow for environmentalism...  it's really just more mucking around with the system.  And while Grist quips that the Uzbeks are not taking similar actions to save the southern portion of the sea, it's not at all clear that they have the option since the water supply to the souther (lower) section of the Aral come from the northern section, and are now going to be even smaller than it once was. On Dry As a Slightly Moist Bone posted 2 years, 7 months ago 1 Response

Bambi syndrome

  Rob makes a good point.  Seals are killed just as humanely than any other wild harvest animals.  
  The seal hunt is also probably the most studied and most effectively managed hunts in the world, evidenced by the fact that populations have been brought back from a level considered too low (1.8 million in the 70s) to 5.5 million, and have been kept reasonably stable at that level by design.  It is ecologically sound and sustainable.

NatOn Drown and Out posted 2 years, 7 months ago 7 Responses

In support of (other people's) hunting.

I must first respond to Jason S.

<In fact, environmentalism that only concerns itself with total populations of animals should offer no opposition to the hunting of dolphins, many species of sea turtles, elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, bears, gorillas, monkeys, and most of the other megafauna that in many ways have been the most potent symbols of environmentalism;>

  I think many if not most of the critters you have listed are considered "endangered species", at least in most of the pockets of their generally now fractured ranges.  Being of such low populations that you start running up against problems associated with low genetic diversity I think should qualify anything to get off the hunting lists.  If population vs. predation is such that populations are growing significantly (and are determined to be in danger of growing to a food-source limited state) then to answer Jason S' question, I fully support carefully regulated hunting, especially if the proceeds from the sale of hunting licenses can support other worthwhile causes.  While I find the Norwegian slaughter of Pilot whales quite distasteful, I cannot oppose it on environmental grounds, since it has proved to be sustainable over the last several centuries.

Cani and I have run across each other before, and will probably continue to fail to reach an agreement.  I think the distinction has been quite well mapped out in this blog between the pragmatist / anthropocentric / conservationist types and the biocentric/animal rights types.  The question I would like to have answered by the animal rights folks (particularly WRT deer) is this:  If you do away with hunting of the megafauna, what are the remaining causes of death.  Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's pretty.

Bikes can save us!!

Death to all the animals.

  All animals, and you and me, will die.  In the kind of natural system that I (and most people who label themselves 'environmentalist') would like to see preserved and expanded, ALL animals not hunted by humans die either of starvation (which I suspect sucks a lot) or of being eaten to death by whatever eats them in the wild.  If I were to face the option of A) being shot by somebody aiming for my heart (aiming to fell me cleanly with one blow), or B) starving or C) being eaten by something like a tiger, I think I would opt for the bullet.
  Add to this argument the fact that much hunting is legislated to insure animals can breed before they are offed (if they survive predation and starvation long enough to breed), and we end up with a system that I think works very well to tie the interests of "sportsmen" and environmentalists together.

Bikes can save us!!