Comments JakobFabian01 has made
Good guys and bad guys
You can't point the finger of blame in only one direction on this one. Champs and chumps alike can be found in both the public and the private sector. The CLEVELAND SCENE article cited by Sean Casten praised a pioneering private company for inventing the new co-generation technology:
"Akron-based ReXorce Thermionics, Inc. just received a $4.3 million grant from Ohio's Third Frontier Project, which funds innovative high-tech research to advance its work on waste-heat recovery."
But the local bureaucrats have to change the rules of energy distribution in order to implement this new technology. And there are, as always, barriers in the practice of other, BIGGER private corporations. As the SCENE reporter wrote:
"Privately owned utilities [...] usually discourage companies, large and small, from installing on-site waste-heat-recovery-based power generation by charging prohibitively high rates for backup power should the local supply break down. Such stand-alone power supplies threaten utilities' bottom lines. After all, profits are derived from costs passed on to users."
I do admire the Great Lakes Brewery. This company has always had a strong environmental consciousness, which even shows in the name given to one of its great beers: "Burning River Pale Ale." This name commemorates the infamous 1969 fire on Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, which served as an alarm bell for environmentalists. These are the best of the good guys!On Cleveland brewery attempts energy recyling yet is foiled by regulation posted 1 year, 3 months ago 3 Responses
Cashing in on a Crisis
That's all the Gingrich plan is. Its beneficiaries will be limited to investors in oil company stocks, who will see their capital gains rise a little. The rest of us won't see any change in gasoline prices for years, if ever.
I'm not even saying that all offshore drilling is always wrong. But this notion that we need to "do it now" without due consideration of the very real risks that offshore drilling poses to the other real benefits that our coastal waters provide us - fish, for example - really sounds like a baaaaad deal.
I think Gingrich wants us to accept his deal with as little forethought as possible. This explains his great hurry.
Even if his petition fails to have much influence in Congress - and let's hope it doesn't - it should still provide the Republican Party with a handy list of useful, gung-ho dupes to target with future propaganda and campaign literature.On Gingrich's 'grassroots' drilling campaign is funded by Big Oil, report says posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses
And I don't love Pickens.
By the way, everybody should know that T. Boone Pickens is also a main sponsor of the "Swift Boat" ads against John Kerry in 2004, which were a slimy smear of baseless insinuations against a man who served honorably in the Vietnam War. In my humble opinion, Pickens is a despicable man, whose obscene wealth brings him much more attention than he deserves. For my part, whether as an environmentalist or as a human being, I do not care to associate with him.On Texas oilman unveils Pickens Plan to avert U.S. energy crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses
Pickens loves nukes, too.
Here's a quote from the website that "GreyFlcn" has helpfully provided (http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/05 etc.):
'The main problem, Pickens said, is that 85 million barrels a day is as much oil as the world industry can produce. That's it. More simply isn't possible. The trouble is, in the next quarter, demand will be around 86.5m barrels each day. The only solution that Boone sees is to make all the alternatives - he singled out wind and solar - much (much) bigger players in America's energy portfolio. For example, even with all of the problems with corn ethanol, he'd rather use it than foreign oil.
When it comes to natural gas vehicles, Pickens said, the U.S. seriously lags behind the rest of the world. There are 7m natural gas vehicles in the world, but only 150,000 in the U.S. It hurt him to say so, but he wishes the U.S. had followed France into the nuclear frontier. Also, Littlefair and Pickens agree that natural gas is a bridge to hydrogen.
As for politics, Boone is not pleased with the energy policies of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He's a McCain supporter, but on the summer gas tax holiday issue, he said that, "I don't know what he has in mind there."'
Apparently, Pickens is a pragmatist, which is a good thing, since adhering to his principles - consume more of everything, but consume everything harmful first, until the government stops you - would be suicidal, one way or another.On Texas oilman unveils Pickens Plan to avert U.S. energy crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses
Investing in solutions
Another thing that may help to determine whether we choose CO2 taxes or capping-and-trading is how we encourage investing in technologies that make CO2 reductions possible.
If all we do is cap-and-trade, then big CO2 producers have to pay small CO2 producers, and the result is that those who need to invest in more efficiency have to pay those who are already efficient. I like meritocracy, but doesn't this kind of trade make improving efficiency more difficult for those who most need to do it (since they get punished financially) and less attractive for those who are already efficient (since they get rewarded just for doing what they're already doing)?
Of course, every proposal includes tax breaks for technological improvements. But it seems to me that a CO2 tax could immediately produce revenue to fund these improvements. This might speed things up.
Everybody talks about the US-American aversion to taxes as if this thing is the one unchangeable fact about the universe. I agree that the anti-tax movement has done an amazing job befuddling US-Americans with their simple vision of big corporations as golden geese, from which all wealth comes (not from labor, apparently) and of government as a terrible black hole into which our money disappears, never to be seen again.
Actually, I know the secret of what government really does with our hard-earned money. It SPENDS it. That's right, and through our votes, we can influence the way the government spends our money - much more than we can influence the way corporations spend the money that we pay them.
So I say, if our calculations should show that CO2 taxes would be either more efficient or fairer (or both) than CO2 capping-and-trading (and I confess I haven't yet done all the math here), then we should SAY SO and not be concerned with "taxophobia." This and other similarly irrational fears would seem less inevitable if we more often had the courage to criticize them rather than pander to them.On Day five of the UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration posted 1 year, 5 months ago 21 Responses
Referees and rewards
It seems to me that the most difficult thing about reducing CO2 emissions is how to discourage cheating.
Whether you tax CO2 or cap-and-trade it, there's always an urge to cheat, and there's not a lot of money to spend on referees to insure that cheating doesn't happen. It's true that peer pressure does discourage cheating, but only if most people are honest. When cheating becomes something that "everybody does," then it's hard to stop.
Perhaps the comparative cost of referees will help us to decide whether to choose CO2 taxes or CO2 capping-and-trading.
And if you think referees are expensive, just imagine how much "Jabailo's" system of "rewards" would cost. You will recall that he asked:
"Why not reward personal behavior?"
Sure, why not pay thieves not to steal? Nope, sorry, I prefer a solution that's less expensive to implement.
On Day five of the UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration posted 1 year, 5 months ago 21 ResponsesTrain to Washington state
Thanks, Umbra! My wife and I wanted to do the right thing this summer and booked a train from Saint Paul to Washington state rather than an airplane. I was fairly certain already that this would be much more energy efficient and less polluting, simply because that seemed to be a reasonable assumption, but I am very grateful for the numbers! Keep up the good work!On Umbra on short-haul flights posted 1 year, 5 months ago 6 Responses
Impracticalities
The Segway just isn't practical.
If it were designed for people with ambulatory disability, then it might have a real niche. But the Segway requires the person who rides it to stand up straight.
The Segway isn't very comfortable, either. For most people, standing in one place like a soldier at attention is more tiring than walking around. Walking is the simplest aerobic exercise there is, and the Segway simply deprives you of this exercise. Standing in one place for a long period of time is a comparatively poor exercise. Unless you tense your leg muscles at regular intervals while you stand in one place, it will give you nothing but varicose veins.
A third impracticality is the need for a very flat surface to ride on. Hit a bump, and you're likely to take a tumble. Even a scooter is less likely to tip over, because its wheels are placed front and back. A Segway's wheels are next to each other. Therefore, the only way to make it stable and resistant to tipping is to add weight at the bottom. Unfortunately, doing this makes the Segway less fuel efficient and even harder to lift over those inevitable bumps that it can't get over.
I'd like to say that all these impracticalities guarantee that the Segway will never become popular with the US-American mainstream. But I'd be saying this in a country where trains, the most efficient means of overland transport for large freight, have been neglected as a means of transportation for 50 years, while taxpayer money has been lavished upon highways and airports. I'd be saying this in a country where fuel efficiency becomes appealing only when the price of oil climbs VERY steeply, and where, after fuel efficiency does rise and the oil price stabilizes, most people interpret this as a signal to buy a bigger car. Who says US-Americans are practical?On Segway sales at an all-time high posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses
Climate change hurts the poor
The poor will likely be hurt more by climate change itself than by anything the rich do to ameliorate it. Think of Pacific Islanders and the residents of southern Bangladesh. Depending on how much the ocean level rises as the result of melting ice caps, these people may lose their homelands.On Conservative Christians launch skeptical climate campaign posted 1 year, 6 months ago 10 Responses
Sustainably fair
What I like about this survey is its pragmatism. The countries that can clearly afford to do better environmentally - including the United States of America - have received lower grades than those that really can't without exacerbating poverty.
No doubt "Blueplanet" is correct about "many parts of India." But consider that a popular solution to the problem of locally concentrated pollution - one often applied in the USA - is simply to disperse the pollution over a wider area. I remember that in the early days, the "solution" to local air pollution was simply to build taller chimneys. This cleared the inner-city smog a little, but added mercury to previously unpolluted lakes and streams.
Appearances can deceive, and local improvement may be achieved at the cost of global degradation.
This is not to say that "Blueplanet" doesn't have a point. Consider where India's polluted rivers are most likely to be found. Would you look for them in the neighborhoods of the poorest urbanites, probably including people of the lowest caste? Yup, I'd look there first, too. If dispersal is the Scylla of false solutions to global problems, then concentration is the Charybdis. Just ask the people who live on the Mississippi Delta. Or near Yucca Mountain.On Brazilians and Indians are the greenest, says survey posted 1 year, 6 months ago 9 Responses
The status was never so quo!
According to the Washington Times article: "At the end of this week, U.S. officials will be in Paris for a meeting with officials from other major economic powers, where climate change is expected to be on the table."
"Other major economic powers?" Which ones? The article doesn't say. Expect world-class foot-draggers like China.
The only people cited in the article who put any positive spin on the President's "initiative" (and this is really TOO strong a word, folks) were:
Christopher C. Horner, Senior Fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and professional global-warming denier, and
Brian Kennedy of the Institute for Energy Research, which "advocates positions on environmental issues which happen to suit the energy industry: climate change denial, claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless, and the deregulation of utilities."
Yup, don't expect much from this meeting. In fact, my advice is that we expect nothing, so that we won't be disappointed.On Bush may turn about-face, ask Congress to address climate change posted 1 year, 7 months ago 6 Responses
Fiction becomes fact?
I recommend Margaret Atwood's terrific dystopian fantasy "Oryx and Crake." This book includes a description of several kinds of "vat foods" that most of the population of her creepy but plausible future world has to eat. Among these weird, mostly fungus-based and gene-manipulated foods are test-tube chicken breasts - grown without the chickens - to keep the world well supplied with "nuggets."
The book is recommendable for many reasons. It's thought-provoking, and it's Atwood's scariest novel yet.On Meat of the future may be grown in a lab posted 1 year, 7 months ago 14 Responses
What can we do?
How do we stop a wall when our imperial executive tosses aside the only laws that might stand in its way?
Do we send angry letters to Congress?
Do we lie down in front of the wall and get ourselves arrested?
In the near future, we can reform the INS so that people who immigrate have an easier time doing so legally; we can re-strengthen labor laws and extend them to foreign workers; and we can punish employers who break these laws, not the immigrants themselves. In this way, we can encourage immigrants to use ROADS rather than perilous deserts and people's farms.
In the more distant future, we can re-negotiate those horrible trade agreements, NAFTA and its progeny, which displaced so many workers in the first place. This is the only remedy that promises to reduce the rate of migration in all directions. We can also try to build international unions to improve working conditions on both sides of the border, though this is also a long-term project.
But in the immediate future, WHAT CAN WE DO TO STOP THIS STUPID WALL?
I feel like I'm living in Berlin in 1961! Ach, ich bin ein Berliner!On Eco-laws pushed aside for faster building of border fence posted 1 year, 8 months ago 9 Responses
Waste is a resource out of place
What is needed is a closed loop. Aquaculture, or the concentrated breeding of fish, isn't bad if you collect the wastes (in clear text, fish poop) and use it to fertilize the land -- to produce nice things like soybeans for all those hungry vegans. I often eat tilapia, a freshwater fish that itself is often branded a pest. I call it another misplaced resource.
Fish-farming on the open sea, as far as I know, is always bad. There's no way to collect the poop or to isolate the sperm of lazy, fenced-in salmon. But there sure as heck is a way to pass decent laws to protect ocean ecosystems and to enforce these laws. With the human population as large and hungry as it is, the oceans are becoming an increasingly important source of food. Strip-mining the sea and refilling depleted areas with garbage has got to stop.On Chilean salmon-farming industry in a sad state posted 1 year, 8 months ago 7 Responses
Mine and Yours
Removing anything at all from a mine while doing the least possible damage to the Earth's surface is not a labor-saving proposition.
But it is a job-creating proposition, assuming that we still do require materials that come from mines. (If you can read this, then you are now using various rare metals that come from mines.) Many hands make careful work and provide the possibility of clean-up. Few hands make slap-dash work and leave behind lasting damage. Using big machines and explosives, we can dramatically speed up the work that a few hands can do. But haste makes waste.
It's the "labor-saving" propositions (which are more accurately money-saving schemes for investors, not techniques that make workers' tasks any easier), like mountaintop removal, that kill both jobs AND nature.
Similar arguments can be made in regard to the mechanization of timber cutting and the mechanization of fishing on the open seas.
We have a right to expect that our elected representatives understand this.On Clinton's MTR comments spark outrage posted 1 year, 8 months ago 3 Responses
God save the GAO
I guess the GAO is the place where all the competent people are now taking refuge from the sheer lunacy that otherwise prevails under the Bush regime.
By the way, I like what the GAO used to be called, the Government Accounting Office, if I remember right.
Calling it the "Government Accountability Office" makes only too painfully obvious that this is the ONLY government agency that still acts responsibly and deals in facts rather than feeding people flattering and self-serving lies.
Just because the GAO tells the truth should not mean that every other government official has license to lie!On EPA closure of research libraries was a stupid idea, says GAO posted 1 year, 8 months ago 3 Responses
Outside the wood-pulp box
There was a great old Doonesbury cartoon that went like this. Zonker was puffing away as usual, and suddenly B.D. walked in. "You better not smoke that stuff! Don't you know what it causes?" "No man, what?" "COMMUNISM!"
I really don't think most of the anti-marijuana establishment ever had a better argument than this, though I believe Wolverine has found a meaningful money trail.
Another reason why the so-called Drug War refuses to die is that it's a great excuse for federal funds. A friend of mine from a small town in Wisconsin said that they used Drug War money their to pay for the city to clear snow off the sidewalks. I don't know how they explained that this would somehow reduce drug abuse, but I guess they got the money.
It's a myth that the Republicans are opposed to government spending. They love spending as much as Democrats do and more, but they always have to find some macho excuse, like fighting crime or bombing people in some foreign country. Spending money on real human needs is rejected as too "feminine." This is why they condemn social spending as the "nanny state," while failing to see that the Big Brother state that they are funding (which now incarcerates more people per capita than China) is far, far worse.
One more thing. I remember during my early grad school days (in the early 1990s), a young student of something like "timber economics" visited our local group of Campus Greens to talk about how important tree farms were to provide us with the fiber we all need for paper. When somebody suggested that hemp be used instead, he just sort of blinked and returned to his message.
Don't believe the corporate types who tell you that they value people who think outside the box. They want you inside that box, and they want to keep on selling you boxes made of the stuff that they know how to use. The oil barons want to sell more oil, and the timber barons want so sell more timber. To them, the outside of the box just doesn't exist.
I do know that some articles made from hemp can be imported. Does somebody know some other good sources? We need to support people who CAN think outside the box!On Legalizing hemp would help environment and economy, says report posted 1 year, 8 months ago 15 Responses
Old news
I have looked at several websites that trumpet the Manhattan Declaration as if it were the Fifth Gospel, but none of these sites provided the names of actual scientists (or actual residents of Manhattan, for that matter) who endorse the Manhattan Declaration. You'd think this would be their main feature!
Then I tried Wikipedia, and everything became clear. As I discovered here -- and as I believe most people reading this thread may already know -- the "Manhattan Declaration" was issued by the "Heartland Institute," a front organization for ideologues from Exxon and Philipp Morris.
But if you're not already aware of this, don't take my word for it! Check out the documentation in Wikipedia under the heading "Heartland Institute."On Please stop calling them 'skeptics' posted 1 year, 8 months ago 40 Responses
Cognitive dissonance
Let's suppose for a moment that someday soon, most of the world's atmospheric scientists prove to be wrong and a tiny minority prove to be right. In this case, I'll be ecstatically happy with the state of the world and mildly disappointed that I was formerly mistaken in my opinions. I believe I can handle this kind of "cognitive dissonance," thank you.
But I pity the fool who today believes whatever he finds convenient (prevailing science be damned), delays actions that might have made our planet more livable, and someday soon has to cope not only with the incontrovertible fact that he was wrong, but also the knowledge that his inaction has only made things worse.
There's cognitive dissonance, and there's knowing that you're a victim of your own bullheadedness. Frankly, I'll take the dissonance.On Please stop calling them 'skeptics' posted 1 year, 8 months ago 40 Responses
I'd call it 'denial.'
Re: "I see comments from a lot of delayers who intensely dislike being linked to 'Holocaust deniers.'" -- Joseph Romm
Re: "Politically, the delayer/delayer-1000 crowd deserves to be isolated." -- Hal 2000
I agree with Joseph Romm that "skeptic" is a little too flattering a term for the folks whom I would prefer to call "greenhouse deniers" or "global responsibility shirkers."
I understand that the folks who deny the reality of global warming, or who deny the validity of the greenhouse gas theory, or who deny the responsibility of humankind for the yearly surplus of greenhouse gases, must be mighty displeased to be called "deniers." This is for me not sufficient reason to use a "nicer" word.
Moreover, I disagree with Romm that the comparison with Holocaust deniers is inaccurate. There are different degrees of denial of the Holocaust, just as there are different degrees of denial of the three-step causal sequence "global warming caused by greenhouse gases caused by human activity." For example, there are Nazi sympathizers who try to push as much responsibility for the Holocaust as possible onto the Soviets. They don't deny that the most massive genocide in recorded history happened; they just deny that Germans were solely or even primarily responsible for it. The shrewdest (and most insidious) deniers in this vein are those who merely compare the Holocaust to other historical massacres and slyly suggest that it "wasn't so bad" by comparison. These deniers are not so very different from global-warming deniers who specialize in denying one or another link of the aforementioned three-step causal chain that is global warming theory as we understand it.
If we want to be really honest, then we can choose our words carefully. One denier may be a global warming denier, another may be a greenhouse-theory denier, and third may be a denier of human responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. A denier of one is not necessarily a denier of all three -- but one denial is enough!
So I say, let's call them deniers, and if they don't like it, tough beans! Their annoyance may be an indicator that we are on the right track. If you want to score political points, then you have to hit a few tender nerves.
As Hal 2000 reminds us, our goal is to ISOLATE global-warming deniers -- not to win them over.On Please stop calling them 'skeptics' posted 1 year, 8 months ago 40 Responses