Global warming: Will you listen now, America?

[struggle4progress]

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
Published: 19 August 2005

On a high-profile and bi-partisan fact-finding tour in Alaska and Canada's Yukon territory, Senators John McCain, a Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic senator for New York, were confronted by melting permafrost and shrinking glaciers and heard from native Inuit that rising sea levels were altering their lives.

"The question is how much damage will be done before we start taking concrete action," Mr McCain said at a press conference in Anchorage. "Go up to places like we just came from. It's a little scary." Mrs Clinton added: "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science. There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."

Their findings directly challenge President George Bush's reluctance to legislate to reduce America's carbon emissions. Although both senators havetalked before of the need to tackle global warming, this week's clarion call was perhaps the clearest and most urgent. It also raises the prospect that climate change and other environmental issues could be a factor in the presidential contest in 2008 if Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain enter it. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain, who represents Arizona, are among the leading, and the most popular, likely contenders.

That they chose Alaska as the stage from which to force global warming on to the American political agenda was not a matter of chance. In many ways, this separated US state is the frontline in the global warming debate. Environmentalists say the signs of climate change are more obvious there than perhaps anywhere else in the US. <snip>

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article306881.ece

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Irony of ironies

This is the same John McCain who wants to eliminate Amtrak. I wonder how he feels about other alternatives to the automobile.

[halobeam]

2. and Hillary would point that out, no doubt. LOL

I don't care who really addresses this, just as long as someone does.

[justinsb]

3. My guess is the US won't do anything anytime soon

It will have to hit everyone in the pocket book before there's any action.

[struggle4progress]

4. Coastal communities around the country are making nervous noise.

[justinsb]

5. And I may be too cynical but ...

I still believe, having lived in the US for 32 years before moving to Canada that if faced with a choice between giving up their cars and being forced to move in a few decades because of flooding, they will keep their cars. My experience in the US is that the vast majority, including many democrats, won't do anything about a problem unless it adversely affects them personally right now, and won't support anything unless it positively affects them (at little or no cost) right now.

[pretzel4gore]

7. true but

most cities had mass transit systems before the car....there was planning and speculating and hoping, but somewhere someone (who was plenty rich) deecided the car was to become mass transit for the people, and so on....greed was given free rein (but quietly, nudge wink) and a whole raft of schemes was developed out of public view, with the government abetting alot of it.....we grew up in that atmosphere...
people aren't that mindless (the gov and the corpse media want you to think so, but they're liars, always have been liars) and most would accept changes that benefitted future generations (ie their grandkids etc)
being cynical is cool, but please never give up on the future!
fukk bush and all he represents!

[justinsb]

9. I certainly haven't given up

I've moved to a country where people are committed to making a difference and a better world, it would be great if the US started down that path, but (an this was certainly not my only motivation for moving) I kindof decided it was better to be a part of the solution, even if it must be done in spite of the US.

[struggle4progress]

8. I never accomplished anything by assuming change was impossible.

Are many Americans self-absorbed nitwits? You betcha!

Does that mean nobody can be swayed by appeals to the common interest? No, not by a long shot ...

[justinsb]

11. I understand that

(see post above) and that's part of the reason I post on boards like this, I still have hope. But, the reality is that we must start planning solutions with the assumption that the US will not be on board. Hope is a great thing, in many ways hope is God because what else can god possibly represent? But, there is a time to start planning for your future without "winning the lottery" being a necessary part of the equasion.

[NNadir]

13. And your program for stopping global climate change is what?

To speak loudly and carry no stick?

Personally I think that an example of a self absorbed nitwit would be a person who complains about global climate change without any practical means to approach it.

For my money, an example of a rich, self-absorbed stupid nitwit would be a person whose solution to global climate change consists linking people to a twitty Greenpeace site where it is announced that some fraction of the world's energy "will be" generated by "renewable" means in the year 2040, when I, thankfully will be dead.

There is one, and only one, means of arresting global climate change: Nuclear power.

Since 1980, nuclear power generated 160 exajoules of energy on this planet. If anti-environmental anti-nuclear twits had their way, and shut all of those plants (because they don't understand doodly squat about risk analysis, radiation, or health) the world's carbon dioxide burden would now be 7 parts per million higher, about 2% greater than it is now.

(If anyone with an appreciable fraction of a brain would like me to do so, I can back this claim up with simple calculations.)

Unfortunately, anti-environmental anti-nuclear twits with no minds, still insist that they are against nuclear power, because basically they are self absorbed nitwits who think - in typical spoiled brat American style - that they can "have it all." They think for instance, that they can indulge their stupid and irrational fear of (gasp, fear, fear, terror) radioactivity and stop global climate change at the same time.

Bullshit. It cannot be done. If it could be done, it would have already been done, since making assertions, no matter how unrealistic, about "renewable energy," are considered very fashionable, sexy even.

Real solutions to enormous problems always involve some pain, some difficult choices, some risk. Only nitwits think otherwise.

We are now about to hear a load of pathetic magical crap about renewable energy and what it will do sometime by the middle of the century.

Global climate change is not waiting for the middle of the century, when the problem will have been selectively sloughed off on a future generation, assuming of course that humanity survives long enough for there to be future generations. It is happening now.

We have Greenpeace twits today running self promotion nitwit campaigns in which they demand in spoiled brat style, the immediate shutdown of nuclear power plants. With what, exactly, would they replace these plants if they all shut tomorrow.

How about we focus on Rancho Seco, in California, where the 983 Megawatt plant was "replaced" by 2 Mega"watts" of solar cells that actually reach their output for 15% of the time.

We have been hearing for 40 years about "renewable" energy, going way back even before global climate change was an issue, going back to the days before Jimmy Carter was President. The fucking 40 years of loud-mouthed posturing about the solar future has done nothing like arrest 7 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

That would be zero. Zilch. Nada. Zip. De Nada.

There is one approach to addressing global climate change that seems to escape attention: Focusing on proven technologies that work as in technologies that have a proven industrial history and whose reliability has been measured by real experience, not the prattling suppositions based on wishful thinking and dopey fantasy.

I repeat the question: The solution to global climate change is?

I personally have no patience with those who obstruct realistic solutions to real problems with dunderhead doublespeak. If we want doublespeak, if we just want to be sick rather than to solve the problem, we can all start watching George W. Bush's speeches.

[struggle4progress]

15. I find it appropriate to say different things to different people.

In the case of the post to which you are currently objecting, I was attempting to convince a previous poster that "there's nothing we can do" is a defeatest attitude that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In your case, I would begin by remarking that the reform of US energy usage is a problem with a large political component: people's views are shaped by their behavior, and these views are protected in part by their psychological needs to feel justified in their behavior. Political problems require, in part, political approaches. Name-calling, which seems to be one of your favorite rhetorical tactics, is often politically counter-productive, and in my experience seldom changes minds.

[NNadir]

20. You didn't answer the question.

Why is this not a surprise?

I am quite satisfied with the number of minds I have changed, and am always happy to interact with these individuals further.

There is another class of people who behave rather like parrots who cannot even change their solgans, never mind their withered minds, since change requires not just a functional intellect - but it also takes a breathe of vision, courage, and an ability to assume risk.

When we speak of such weak people, we can recognize quite clearly how poor their thinking is, we see that they cannot even formulate a response to a question that bears on the question itself.

For instance, I ask, what would you do to arrest global warming, and we get a vague bunch of blather like something out of a freshman Political "Science" course about recognizing a political problem. Now if people drive around to discuss the politics of global climate change until the coastline reaches Colorado, the seas will still rise.

The issue involves energy, not useless chatter by scientific illiterates. Energy in the universe is conserved in things like chemical potential energy (most fossil fuels), gravatational (tital energy), nuclear potential energy (geothermal energy and nuclear energy) and in expressed kinetically via nuclear, particles, and nuclear and solar radiation.

One can have as many discussions as one wishes of the psychology or as many social "science" seminars as can stomache, but none of this with solve a single problem of energy.

The problem of global climate change is involved far more in the chemistry of atmospheres, the entropy of mixing, materials science, geology, meterology, electrical, mechanical and nuclear engineeering far more than it is involved in a the meetings of the freshmen physcology majors club in some dreary student center in some out of the way university.

In short, it is a matter for grown-ups who are educated with respect to the technical issues and can intelligently weigh technical responses solutions. Such a person, a grown up, would answer the question by saying, if he or she so believed, "I believe that we should spaceships to collect solar waves and beam down to earth as microwaves." This shows that - whether or not the idea is a workable or desirable - the proponent has seriously thought about the issue and is prepared to engage in a discussion in which he or she will defend his or her point until the merits are either proved or disproved.

Then we have the Greenpeace website: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/

Here is the program there, more than half negative statements, with any positive statements blankly vague. In each case, I have asked bit of balderdash blather with my simpl questions that, since they will not be answered reveal Greenpeacers to be sloganeering, self-absorbed, middle class magical thinking twits with no practical experience of the worl:


Stop climate change How?
Save our seas How?
Protect ancient forests How?
Say no to genetic engineering Why?
Eliminate toxic chemicals Why?
End the nuclear threat Why?
Encourage sustainable trade With Whom?
Abolish nuclear weapons How?


Speak loudly and carry no stick.

[struggle4progress]

21. In my view, the global warming problem has a huge political dimension.

Technophiles can make all the noise they want around "fixes" like dumping iron into ocean surface waters to increase primary production, or collecting carbon dioxide and pumping it into deep geological formations, or .. or .. or ..

People around the world naturally want a high standard of living, but our current mechanisms for producing the relevant goods and services all involve tremendous waste. Everything thrown into a landfill represents wasted resources. Every usable aquifer contaminated and not cleaned up reduces future economic opportunities by increasing future costs relative to what such costs would have been if clean available groundwater had remained available.

Continuing current production habits simply encourages continuing waste. Just as town oftens do not solve their traffic problems by widening roads, raising speed limits, and building parking garages -- since such actions have the immediate effect of making driving seem more convenient and attractive -- we are very unlikely to solve problems associated with resource waste by significantly increasing our energy production.

Hardly anyone changes his/her mind about issues associated with lifestyle choices without first beginning to change behavior. This is the point of pushing conservation-related matters (such as public transportation), of arguing the importance of more efficient devices, and of emphasizing waste reduction. Until people see behavioral alternatives, there is simply no chance that large issues can be addressed politically. And this, of course, is why the rightwing corporate mouthpieces remain so eager to discredit public transportation, recycling, and related matters.

You repeat again and again that nuclear reactors will solve our problems. Whether they could do so safely or not is an engineering question; whether they actually will perform safely or not is related to regulatory matters. But the actual effect of a new generation of reactors on the global climate and on the demand for other existing resources is a political and economic question.

I say that your agenda, if successful, is likely to exacerbate our climate and resource problems: you push reactors as a magic bullet, an approach which (if politically successful) would provide a new generation of reactors without having any effect whatsoever on other power sources; increased power supply would increase demand as well, with the result that use of all existing sources would increase. But of course your real agenda has nothing whatsoever to do with limiting existing emissions problems: it is rather to push nuclear power ...

[struggle4progress]

16. "Ex falso quodlibet" is, incidently, useless for scientific reasoning.

It is of course useful for developing axiomatic systems, but it is completely void of scientific content.

"If .. anti-nuclear<s> .. had .. shut all of those <nuclear> plants .. the world's carbon dioxide burden would now be ..about 2% greater than it is now" is true only because the hypothesis is contrary to fact. It is equally true that

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, the world's carbon dioxide burden would now be lower than it is now,"

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, American would have a Mars colony today," and

"If anti-nuclears had shut all of the nuclear plants, cows would all be purple."

You are certainly welcome to reason about non-existent alternate histories in imaginary alternative universes, but you shouldn't pretend that such arguments are "scientific" in any meaningful sense, since they are based on fantasies.

The fact that you have apparently clad the results of some some arithmetic calculations in an "ex falso" wrapper doesn't redeem the argument.

[pretzel4gore]

18. too bad the bathwater dissolved the baby...

maybe nuke energy could have been part of a multi channel global energy plan, but face it: when nuke power was being developed (with lotsa hoorays for the 'cheap' power advertised) certain tech problems remained unsolved, namely the disposal of the toxic nuclear wastes ...other problems were accidents at nuke facilities (and the cost of insuring property nearby) safe transportaion of nuclear materials and stopping everybody from building nuclear bombs from the skills developed in developing power....because of the toxicity of nuclear/radioactive material, only a very well structured, fair and progressive society could really chance all the negatives, and if anything, our society (global i mean) is less cohesive then at any point in its history...i for one, would prefer the apocalypse then to see the bushevik nazipoos pig fukking animals to get away with murdering jfk, rfk wellstone, gary webb, the brazilian worker de menendez and god knows who else (not to mention western democracy)
i hate them so much i would rather planet die then forgive and forget their crimes, and i'm a card carrying consumer!...christ, when was the last time anyone in power said 'we must eliminate poverty everywhere on earth, and asap'? that would be A GOOD START but that's all..
humanity might be like a hopeless drunkard who needs to 'hit bottom' before 'it' wises up

[struggle4progress]

19. ???

[jpak]

17. LOL!!!!

:rofl:

[wli]

6. we're already into runaway global warming territory

Peak Oil will resolve a lot of the GHG emissions by itself, but the permafrost melting will release billions of tons of methane into the atmosphere and accelerate the process far beyond what we could naturally do ourselves.

[hatrack]

10. Forgive my cynicism, but I have to repost from this afternoon

Yeah, whatever, John.

You'll doubtless soon issue a resounding call for action - an exciting new voluntary initiative featuring America's vanishingly tiny alternative energy sector as the target of billions of dollars in subsidies, and then you'll get to look all green for the Tee-vee.

Your buddy Chimpy will remark about how seriously he takes this issue, and demand more studies, since it's absolutely vital that we know to a factor of certainty approaching infinity that it's really happening. Further studies will then be necessary to determine just what percentage of emissions are due to human activity and what percentage to natural processes, because, doncha know, if we didn't emit it, we are immune to its effects.

As the 2006 midterm and 2008 presidential elections approach, and as things go increasingly haywire with crops, oceans and weather, the airwaves will groan beneath the weight of images conjured by the booming PR industry as concerned politicians busy themselves telling us all about our Healthy Forests, our Clear Skies and the miraculous hydrogen vehicles that are coming soon to a showroom floor near you. No, seriously, they are - really, they are!

And meanwhile, glaciers will evaporate, ice shelves will buckle, permafrost will slump into bogs and muskeg on a scale we can't even imagine, fisheries will collapse, forests will die and burn, grasslands will wither and rivers will dry up, all indifferent to our votes, our denial and bargaining, our political persuasions or our resounding calls for action.

Fuck you, Senator, and the party and corporations you rode in on. Too damn late.

[dcfirefighter]

12. three part solution

1) US Citizen Energy Dividend: ~$100 a person ($30B/yr) given in quarterly payments, and raised from taxes on GHG emissions. Raise 5%/yr for 10 years, then 10%/yr for 10 years, then 20%/yr for 10 years. Big GHG end users pay more than they get, low GHG end users get more than they pay.

2) Nationalized railroads (private railcars) much like US interstate highway system . . . matched funds from local money.

3) Encourage state and local governments to raise money through taxes on land value, encouraging economic (and economized) use of land, reduced sprawl, lower transport costs, and plenty of local funding for, among other things, transport.

[OneBlueSky]

14. if they think Alaska is bad, they should pay a visit to Siberia . . .

Climate warming as Siberia melts
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725124.500