“Your camera can create clean cars.” That was the subject head on a mass mailing I received from the Sierra Club’s Greg Haegele. This was merely a gimmick—a “photo” petition to the Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA is considering rescinding the Bush Administration’s decision to block California and other states from implementing CO2 emissions standards for cars, and the Sierra Club is leading the cheering section. While I am all in favor of reducing CO2 emissions and fast, while rescinding the Bush legislation might well be a good idea, I’m dismayed by the way so many advocates of reducing greenhouse gases focus on micromanaging automotive reductions rather than on the big picture. To be sure, Ann Mesnikoff of the Sierra Club says the group is also working on cap and trade, a big picture approach to greenhouse gas mitigation. But what is it with anti-anthropogenic global warming (AGW) crusaders and cars?
As TTAC’s William C. Montgomery has pointed out, the hundreds of millions of cattle wallowing about feedlots farting their exceptionally insulating methane into the atmosphere play a big part in global warming. Yes, cattle rival cars in total impact.
And what about industry, electric power plants, and buildings? Even in the United States, cars are responsible for less than 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
No doubt the focus on cars has to do with the human brain’s being wired to see patterns, and only then, only MAYBE, to think about what they mean. Cars certainly are sexier than heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), or power plants and feedlot cattle, and they seem to be everywhere! Perhaps it’s something in our nation’s puritan heritage that sees something sexy and either blows it up into a reality show or tries to cover it over with Victorian garb.
Attention advocates of mitigating global warming: most economists say an emissions tax is the most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because it puts the onus equally on all emitters: Reddy Kilowatt, HVAC, Bossy th’ Cow, Calvin the Car, and the thousands of others that didn’t make this list, and it takes politics out of play.
But make that a revenue neutral tax—one that reduces the income tax, says Stefan Unnasch, an independent consultant on matters of climate change and fuels. A revenue neutral tax would have a far greater chance of gaining the support it would need to become law, and it would prevent the usual suspects from keeping politics in play by fighting over the proceeds of the tax.
So, Sierra Club, and other environmental groups: quit picking on the car, and concentrate on finding and promoting the most effective ways to ratchet down greenhouse emissions.
What the…?
I realize the author didn’t coin the phrase, but anthropomorphic is an adjective ‘ascribing human attributes‘ to something not human.
So now global warming is an entity taking on human forms?
Is there an English major in the house?
The A in AGW or AGCC should be “anthropogenic”.
The proceeds of the tax?
Anyone checked the size of the budget deficit lately?
Ah, but instead the plan is cap and trade. For those who don’t know, cap and trade is where the pols conspire with entrenched interests and connected parties to indirectly tax us while stifling innovation and increasing barriers to entry.
Uhh…this is a new tax in the making, which positively makes the [man-made] global warming agnostics cross. How else are we REALLY gonna pay off Washington’s credit card if we merely bilk the rich? B.O. said we’d all have skin in the game.
Amory Lovins and others have people thinking reducing carbon emissions will not only be possible, but easy. People blame cars because the carmakers have been easy targets in the past. Now that is changing. Who knows what we will blame next. Certainly it will not be ourselves.
Can’t blame cows either. Cow farts add methane. But methane does not have the staying power of carbon dioxide. Methane concentration in the atmosphere has stabilized. Carbon dioxide concentration continues to rise.
Because the owners of the cars are the most vunerable non-organised group in history. You can attack the car because the only people that jack up over issues are the big bad car companies, not the owners Most Automobile clubs are in it for the money (finance travel etc..) so political considerations are fragmented at most.
If owners formed a lobby group/political party imagine the power. How many owners are there in North America, the world? when x million members vote in congresspeople/senators/memebers of parliment maybe the issue will be less emotive and more logical as to where the focus of greenhouse warming (if such a thing exists :)) solutions lie.
So rise up, fellow owners/driver, viva la revolution!
Oil is an easy target. So many people are shoveling their savings away feeding big butt cars that it is an important factor in our economic slide. And lets not forget who the money goes to.
We need smaller more efficient cars that run on domestically sourced fuel. AGW and cap-and-trade are scams that will eat our young. I’m serious.
If they get in the way of energy efficiency and independence they will be ruinous.
You can’t pay down the national debt with a tax based on a fairy tale. I wish Mr. Obama didn’t believe these clowns.
Because cars are the only thing that pollute. Don’t you know anything?
In the last ten years there has been a huge increase in manmade CO2 and the temperature of the Earth has not risen and is now actually falling. CO2 makes plants grow. Why would you want to restrict it?
We can’t do a lot about cattle; if we’re gonna keep eating them, then they’ll keep farting. Buildings and power plants have 50+ year life spans, so it’ll take a long time for any changes to work through the system. But the average new car buyer buys another one four to five years later, and if the newer car produces a less emissions than the old one then there’s progress.
So even if automobiles only produce 20% of total greenhouse emissions, halving that number is the easiest way to get a 10% overall reduction in the shortest amount of time.
We can do something about cattle. Kill em all. Poof! There goes a big percentage of greenhouse gases.
Then we kill the sheep. The pigs. The chickens… hey, we’ve practically solved the “CO2 problem”! Now let’s see… how do we get rid of the other 5 billion people we don’t actually care about? That’s almost all of your CO2 “emissions”, right there!
I do agree that Climate Change is a big issue, but the focus on automobiles is insane. Tax the gasoline for emissions. Burning x gallons of gas produces x amounts of CO2, whether you’re using it for your car, your lawnmower, your generator or using it to light bonfires. Tax the coal, too… hell, tax everything that burns.
—
The greenies do have their eyes on cows, though… they’re encouraging people to eat less beef… which is both healthy, and which helps ease up demand on feed grain so the land can be used to grow food crop, instead.
An interesting question: is cap-and-trade also going to cover cars and gasoline? I would think so. So you would get a gas tax disguised as a fee for cap-and-trade credits.
That would then be in addition to CAFE standards and renewable fuel standards.
Personally, I’m all for it, by the way.
Cap and trade systems sound good but never work. The politicians have proven that they cannot run them well. Europe taught us that.
In the United States, where we pile the pork onto every bill, can you imagine us putting meaningful caps on politically powerful industries? No way.
The reasons AGW people focus on cars are simple:
1) Most academics live in places where it’s convenient to walk places, as do most governmental officials and media. Driving is ridiculous in Manhattan, D.C., or around the campus of Yale, so they assume it’s ridiculous in Montana, on the rare occasions when they bother to think about white trash.
2) We all have an inner Puritan. Human history is packed with moralizers and tongue-waggers. The problem is that nowadays we’ve made a sacrament out of any perverted sex act you can imagine, enshrined every other type of deviant activity, and basically stated that, as a society, we will not condemn anybody for anything. So whom can we condemn? On whom can we fearlessly exercise that inner Puritan which is yearning to stone some adulterous slut?
Simple. Let’s blame cars. Nobody will stand up for cars. Even the auto rags, most notably the Brit rags, act like owning a V8 is morally equivalent to sodomizing children.
It also allows the people who hate cars and the freedom they represent to express that hatred.
Blucon, Where in the world did you hear the temp was falling (other than Fox)?
They bang on cars because what they truly seek is the enserfment of the American populace.
In their dreams they are the lords and ladies riding off to balls and dinners in the palaces and we are the cloth-capped dirty faced workmen walking home to our unheated cottages from the fields. When we see them we doff our caps and get out of the way of their carriages. Sometimes, if we are respectful, they toss us a few coins.
Today there was an article in the NYTimes complaining that Americans used too much toilet paper and that it was too soft.
They will not rest until the American middle class is humiliated and destroyed.
If you think about it, not everyone lives near a power plant, not everyone lives near a cattle farm. But the one thing just about everyone knows, sees and uses is a car. It’s an easy target because you can’t hide behind “out of sight, out of mind”.
The anthropogenic global warming crowd are about control, about getting everyone to act a certain way. Science has nothing to do with it. They use false data fed into computer models that were not meant to do predictive work. Parasites like James Hansen and Al Gore push it to the limit in order to enrich themselves and get their faces on tv. Scientists who speak out against it risk losing their research grants and being pilloried as “deniers.”
Carbon dioxide is the foodstuff of plants, not a pollutant. Out of all the CO2 in the atmosphere man’s activities contributes only a small portion. CO2 is not the main contributor to the greenhouse effect, water vapor is.
The global warming pushers, at bottom, hate people. They think there are too many of us exhaling the dreaded carbon dioxide, let alone driving around from the mall to the urban sprawl and making every place look different from how it did in the days of the dinosaurs. That’s why they focus on cars.
@Ruckover: You may review the data for yourself:
“The last six years (2003-2008) show a steep temperature drop in the satellite record, which is not present in the GISS data. … Since the beginning of 2003, RSS has been dropping at 3.60C/century, UAH has been dropping at 2.84C/century, and GISS has been dropping at 0.96C/century.”
Link
FYI: RSS and UAH are temperature measurments taken from sattelite data, GISS is taken from ground based weather stations.
So any chance we get to know what those graphs mean?
Statistics are great, but I’m wont not to trust graphs unless they label their axes. That and I don’t really know the regressions behind their trend line. Well, that and if you play around with the source they give you wind up seeing a distinct upward trend from the early 90’s to today.
But what is it with anti-anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) crusaders and cars?
Because cars represent freedom of choice. Choice does not fit with an environmentalist agenda.
What are we gonna do? We still need to build stuff, we still need electricity, we still need cars, we still need asphalt, we still need fertilizer.
Cap and Trade is one of the worst ideas I can possibly think of. A tax in disguise that does nothing more than provide the government yet another way to get massive amounts of taxes from the public while killing jobs (particularly those that are in industries that unfortunately, have to pollute more than bob’s hardware store). Sorry, but if we want all of the things we have in the modern world, sometimes there’s going to be some bad side effects, you can’t get rid of them no matter what you do…not unless we want to give up all the great things we have today and go back to maybe 1 billion people on the planet living on farms. No thanks. We still need all these things produced that results in pollution. So instead, we tax it here, the places shut down, so now we have to buy it from China or India or Mexico where they have pretty much zero pollution controls (particulate or CO2…if the latter can really even be considered a pollutant). Result? Jobs in America lost, increased overall global pollution, massive taxes on those companies that remain. Horrible horrible idea.
I gotta say, I had high hopes for Obama, but this dude is starting to piss me off almost as much as the last administration. Instead of the wars and economic downturn, these bozos now wanna spend like there’s no tomorrow, and put into law just about every green-wacko agenda that’s out there, then cloak it in a we-know-better-than-you-we-are-creating-green-jobs-for-the-future pill and jam it down our throats.
Lets please stop all of this before America is well and truly bankrupt and buried.
NOTE: I’m glad we have pollution controls. I’m glad there are laws that keep us healthy. But there is always a tradeoff somewhere, and my concern is that we are swinging way too far in one direction….and we won’t realize the costs until its too late.
A cap and trade system is not a tax.
Jerome10 :
“I gotta say, I had high hopes for Obama, but this dude is starting to piss me off almost as much as the last administration. Instead of the wars and economic downturn, these bozos now wanna spend like there’s no tomorrow, and put into law just about every green-wacko agenda that’s out there, then cloak it in a we-know-better-than-you-we-are-creating-green-jobs-for-the-future pill and jam it down our throats.”
“Jam it down our throats”? No way.
This country elected the guy it did for a reason. The American people are not stupid. Everything was on the table; the President-then-Candidate didn’t really “hide” anything.
Nope, the American people knew the deal, and fully understood that it was to be a four year deal, yet they still voted for it. They must have had a good reason.
I’m thinking less and less about cars these days; and I’m starting to look at the ads less and less. At this point, I just hope my friends and family don’t starve due to our vote choices. Automotive concerns are decidedly less important right now. And THAT tells me that any recovery is a long way off.
@ Robert Schwartz (and probably Bluecon)
“According to the dataset maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, global average temperature rose from 14.02 degrees Celsius in the 1970s to 14.26 degrees in the 1980s and then to 14.40 degrees in the 1990s. In the first eight years of the twenty-first century, the world averaged 14.64 degrees Celsius.”
Oh dear, that seems to be a warming trend.
Should NASA have it’s money taken away??
Also the satellite vs ground ‘diveragance’ argument has recently been pretty comprehensively put to sleep.
@ Johnny Canada
Because cars represent freedom of choice. Choice does not fit with an environmentalist agenda.
Really? I don’t describe myself as environmentalist, but I’d sure prefer people didn’t waste energy and destroy the planet.
I respect that people should have choices, but as soon as those choices have implications for the wider community they need to be discussed openly and will need to be the subject of public policy.
Many environmental groups’ technical and hard-science skills are lacking. A rational, mathematically sound outline of greenhouse gases origins won’t trump their (emotionally based) cars-are-bad-cuz-I-see-’em-every-day mentality.
So, unless we address every source of greenhouse gas emissions simultaneously and with equal proportion we should do nothing?
That seems to be the thesis of this article.
The point about regulating cars, power plants, cattle lots, or anything else is to make sure that the users pay for the externalities they cause rather than having society in general pay them.
Furthermore, when you add up transportation fuels to fossil fuel extraction/transport, it accounts for about 25% of GHG emissions, compared to about 14% for livestock.
http://www.solarnavigator.net/images/Greenhouse_Gas_by_Sector.jpg
The global warming pushers, at bottom, hate people. They think there are too many of us exhaling the dreaded carbon dioxide, let alone driving around from the mall to the urban sprawl and making every place look different from how it did in the days of the dinosaurs.
Do you actually KNOW any of these researchers? I do. They are sincere, hard-working people who devote their lives to climate science at modest pay (typically about what an auto assembly line worker makes) because they think it’s important. And when they say they are scared, it is because they are scared.
Many of them are not sophisticated in understanding how to apply climate research to public policy. Many green organizations definitely do have anti-car and anti-progress agendas…but not all do, and so far the Obama administration seems to understand that tackling global warming means working all the angles, not just going after cars.
Trying to make all climate researchers into villains is just as ridiculous as trying to make all car enthusiasts into villains. Global warming is real, it’s here, and we need to find a meaningful way to maximize our energy options and minimize the disruptive impact of a warming planet.
The car is not where the leverage is. There are many data points that put in doubt anthropogenicism as a prime factor in global warming, and emerging research suggesting global cooling is an imminent long-term danger. We don’t know yet. But if we take the position that the local real pollutants of combustion (CO2 is not a pollutant) argue for moderation in burning fuels, then anthropogenic CO2 emissions will decline as a consequence. The near-term leverage is in fixed infrastructure.
If the entire US private automotive fleet were overnight upgraded to Prius-level fuel efficiency, the greenhouse gas emission reduction would be only 335mm metric tons annually, or just over 2% of the annual *reduction* the IPCC contends is necessary by 2050 to simply arrest climate change. The IPCC is seeking a halving of annual carbon emissions by human activity in the next 40 years, from roughly 28 Billion metric tons annually today, to 14B mt.
This will not be likely be achieved by any methods and certainly not by targeting the automobile.
While I agree there are many sincere, science-driven climate researchers, there are few environmental activists free of a political agenda, and like most ideologues, their agenda is one of judgment and control, with a measure of “I-like-animals-better-than-people” self-loathing thrown in. What they don’t realize is that unfettered mobility is a wealth driver in modern economies and wealth makes the world cleaner. Put another way, *MORE* private automotive mobility is likely to generate the wealth needed to make real progress on carbon emissions where it counts.
Coal power generation dwarfs the automobile as a source of anthropogenic carbon release. Carbon sequestering at fixed-location power plants, accelerated delivery to market of hyperbranched aminosilica (HAS) linings for smokestack absorption of CO2, mass-adoption of solar farming in high sunshine geogrpahies, and mass subsidy of roof-top solar for business and residences all can be undertaken for near-term improvement outweighing any progress that can be made via a crusade against cars.
If we’re going to spend a few trillion dollars on government reflation of our balance-sheet recession economy, imagine what can be accomplished in as little as five years with a hefty percentage of stimulus money directed to moderating carbon release from fixed-location power generation and consumption. Meanwhile, the already-extant and immutable trend for steady improvement of the auto fleet can continue its course unabated while personal mobility is proliferated for wealth expansion.
The Greens targeting the car have it exactly wrong. Replacing an auto fleet is a 30 year deal, and the improvements they want are already happening. Every new iteration of a vehicle type is more efficient than what it replaces. Even a 6.2L Escalade. The automobile is taking care of itself. The leverage is elsewhere.
If the environmental lobby in the US or any other industrial(izing) country is serious about reducing carbon release on a meaningful schedule, they would put aside their attack on personal transportation. That they don’t tells me their political agenda is not primarily environmental at all.
Phil
My bad on the anthropogenic.
Text amended.
RF
@ PeteMoran
I respect that people should have choices, but as soon as those choices have implications for the wider community they need to be discussed openly and will need to be the subject of public policy.
That could apply to everything in our lives; the cars we drive, the size of our homes, how many children we have, how much money we earn, how we vote. Do you really want to live like that?
Ressler: “there are few environmental activists free of a political agenda,…”
Isn’t that what makes them an activist? I mean, what’s the point of having a point of view if you don’t share it and encourage policy in accord with it? Shall we discuss “corporate welfare activists?”
Ressler: “their agenda is one of judgment and control, with a measure of “I-like-animals-better-than-people” self-loathing thrown in.”
Oh, please, get out and meet some actual people, will you? The “environmental activists” I know work for manufacturing industries, eat meat (although many have cut back on that) and do people-loathing activities like run Boy Scout troops and coach football.
Ressler: “There are many data points that put in doubt anthropogenicism as a prime factor in global warming, and emerging research suggesting global cooling is an imminent long-term danger.”
What “research” is that? Some “Maunder Minimum” hypothesis, as reported by AmericanThinker? Nobody knows whether or not it is periodic, much less the actual period with any certainty at all. In contrast, the heat-trapping properties of GHGs are very well known.
Ressler: “The Greens targeting the car have it exactly wrong. Replacing an auto fleet is a 30 year deal…”
True both ways. Investment in a gas-guzzler today is a 30-year commitment to a high-CO2-output vehicle.
@Pete Moran: Goddard Institute for Space Studies = GISS. Ironically, GISS is ground station data.
Second: Saying: “In the first eight years of the twenty-first century, the world averaged 14.64 degrees Celsius.” Doesn’t say there is a trend. Temperature measurements are at a point in time. I woke up at 7:30 a.m. and the temperature was 53 degrees F. It will be going up to 56 this afternoon. Averaging temperature numbers buries trend information. The same is true for planet wide measures. Knowing the average for eight years does not tell me what the trend during that time was.
The trend over the last six years has been down. More importantly, geological processes unfold over very long periods of time. Cherry picking time frames proves very little. Analyzing the the last 40 years, because that is all we have data for is like a drunk looking for his keys under the street lamp.
Third: “Also the satellite vs ground ‘diveragance’ [sic] argument has recently been pretty comprehensively put to sleep.” That article tries to use satellite data as a proxy for missing ground data. It does not prove the reliability of one or the other. Further, whatever the divergence between GISS and the satellite data all three have trended negative during the last 6 years.
Fourth: “Should NASA have it’s money taken away?” Yes. The bumbling incompetents can’t even orbit a satellite any more. Hansen, in particular, should be fired for cause, because he appeared as a witness in a British court proceeding for the purpose of justifying vandalism.
@cpmanx: “The global warming pushers, at bottom, hate people. … Do you actually KNOW any of these researchers?” You have not refuted @fincar1. He, and I, were attacking the legions of “environmentalists” typified by Al “Goracle” Gore. We can stipulate the good faith of researchers, although not their self interest, other than Hansen, who has crossed the line and should be retired. However, “environmentalists” need to be psychoanalyzed and ridiculed.
The economy is shattered, the US is headed towards bankruptcy, the US has two cold years in row and Algore has frightened the citizens into believing harmless CO2 is burning up the world. Maybe there is a reason the economy is going down the tubes.
Robert Schwartz,
My friends in the Environmental Studies Department talk about how important it is to look at as wide a swath of studies as is possible to make an assessment on climate. While there are individual studies that point to falling temperatures, there are more studies that point to rising temperatures.
Also, please note that NASA’s failure to launch was actually a failure by Orbital Sciences, a private company. Perhaps, the lesson here is that for-profit companies are not always the best way to go. I am not saying that, but I just think it is funny that we want to punish NASA for Orbital Sciences’s failure.
@ Robert Schwartz
Averaging temperature numbers buries trend information.
???????????
I respectfully suggest you go back and review the first year statistics course you might have taken.
trend over the last six years has been down and Cherry picking time frames proves very little Problems here methinks.
You cannot take 1/100000000000000th of a chart’s line, draw a line through it and call it a trend. That would be the same thing as saying “gas was $4 a year ago, it’s $2 now, it’ll be free next year.” Dumb.
Sure, the globe may have warmed, but so what? 30 years ago, it was cooling, and I remember in school that they were warning of a new ice age. The also blamed it on pollution. So which is it? Neither. And it sure as hell isn’t because of cars, which emit .1% of the worlds CO2.
ruckover: “While there are individual studies that point to falling temperatures, there are more studies that point to rising temperatures.”
And both can be absolutely correct, but only with reference to specific time frames studied. Only one can be correct if they refer to a common time frame. A plurality of one conclusion over the other does not prove anything.
Anti-AGW arguments pinpoint a single variable out of thousands, not all of which are known or understood, that determine climate. They build models that isolate CO2 as a major determinant in its equation. In fact, climate complexity is not wholly understood. Pieces are understood, but it is the height of arrogance to assert these current models accurately reflect or predict reality. There are still well more unknowns than knowns. Advocating massive public policy change that restrains or retards the standard of living for all based on such a theory is folly.
While not an AWG skeptic, I do believe there are compound reasons for temperature variations, and that neither camp is willing to see the whole picture.
That said, I’m also amused by the cherry picking of data taking place – the above “forty years” of data is rubbish, for instance. We have climate data going back 100.000 years by now, carefully collected and collated with many data points, from a variety of variables (ice and land strata, archeological digs, etc.) It’s quite astonishingly comprehensive and telling.
What the AWG-deniers seem to miss, is that human activity is vast, and is contributing, on top of the variations that would otherwise occur.
Cars will be hit by regulation, as will a number of other activities, in an attempt to control emissions. Will it be effective, or should we go full Lomborg and just let it happen. (and do remember, Lomborg while a darling of the AWG-deniers, himself states that AWG is a fact, but that it is too expensive to do something about it, and that we should spend the money on other activities, instead of trying to stop the unstoppable.)
The planet is spectacularly resilient, a lot more than we are. I am not worried about Planet Earth.
@ Stein X Leikanger
I’m also amused by the cherry picking of data taking place – the above “forty years” of data is rubbish, for instance.
Just to be clear, and I should have clarified it, it was as response to the “Global Cooling” claim cherry picked from 3 years of data.
I’m not aware of any official meteorological body (ones that statistically measure weather into climate) for government, for space science, for Navy etc that would claim “cooling”.
There is no disputing the science shows that there has been no warming of the Earth in the last ten years. And at the same time there was a huge increase in manmade CO2.
So why did the last ice age end some 10 thousand years ago? A mere speck in the geologic time record. The slight warming in the climate was nothing unusual. It was warmer in the ’30’s. Now the Earth cools and the Arctic is refreezing. Just a normal Earth cycle.
Nothing new in the Earth’s temperature.
Detroit’s killer heat wave of 1936
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/history/index.php?id=134
“If owners formed a lobby group/political party imagine the power. How many owners are there in North America, the world? when x million members vote in congresspeople/senators/memebers of parliment maybe the issue will be less emotive and more logical as to where the focus of greenhouse warming (if such a thing exists :)) solutions lie.
So rise up, fellow owners/driver, viva la revolution!”
There is a lobby group. It’s called the National Motorists Association (NMA). Here is their site:
http://www.motorists.org/
“Protecting Motorists Since 1982”
In the last ten years there has been a huge increase in manmade CO2 and the temperature of the Earth has not risen and is now actually falling.
Really? Is that so? You may want to actually research that. (and by research, I mean “read what actual scientists have measured” rather than “listen to what people I agree with are cherrypicking”).
Because cars represent freedom of choice. Choice does not fit with an environmentalist agenda.
Then why is it that, say, people who tend to disagree with global warming are statistically more likely to hate freedom of religion, sexuality and learning?
The sword of demagoguery cuts both ways.
Can’t blame cows either. Cow farts add methane. But methane does not have the staying power of carbon dioxide. Methane concentration in the atmosphere has stabilized. Carbon dioxide concentration continues to rise.
People who mention cow farts, forest fires or, well members of Greenpeace who talk too much fail to understand the the carbon cycle. Cow farts are not net new carbon; ethanol (when you’re not burning gasoline to make it) is not net new carbon. Burning fossil fuels is net new carbon.
The planet is spectacularly resilient, a lot more than we are. I am not worried about Planet Earth.
What people need to be worried about is what changes in weather patterns do to our ability to grow enough food to feed ourselves, or if certain highly-populated areas will end up with rainfall levels that are problematically high.
Global warming is not like, say, a nuclear holocaust that scythes the planet clean of life above the level of, say, tetanus.
There is a lobby group. It’s called the National Motorists Association (NMA).
Along with the nutjobs at the NRA, perhaps these people should be “psychoanalyzed and ridiculed”?
If the environmental lobby in the US or any other industrial(izing) country is serious about reducing carbon release on a meaningful schedule, they would put aside their attack on personal transportation. That they don’t tells me their political agenda is not primarily environmental at all.
The problem is that personal transportation is an easy target, while going up against industry takes balls that most governments don’t have, and would require every nation to sign on so as not to create (or increase) a productivity gap between compliers and polluters.
Simplistic greens (eg, me, when I was in first-year university) attack cars because their easy marks; greens who’ve been marinated in realism have come to understand that going after the smokestacks is very hard (the best we could probably do is cap-and-trade), while cars are easy and have the satellite benefit of reducing refinery emissions.
Global warming is just god hugging us a little bit closer, eh?
The reason cars got the attention is simple: there’s a lot more low-hanging fruit there (and, as one other astute commenter pointed out, fruit that can be more quickly picked).
Yeah, we’re not going to get everybody to take public transportation, but getting 90% of the people who use SUVs as single-occupant commuters to drive Civics instead would be a huge benefit at fairly little cost compared to the other ways to get that large a reduction in CO2.
The planet may be resilient, but lice life on the surface is not. >99% of all species are no longer around, and dramatic climate changes are implicated. Asteroids, massive volcanic eruptions, etc.
The great thing about the cap and trade system is that it will create so much opportunity for fraud. There isn’t a way to effectively measure the amount of CO2 reduction a particular project will acheive, never mind to accurately project this data. I am looking forward to getting in on the profit through selling overly optimistic carbon credits game.
@psarhjinian
Yes the scientific data all show the Earth in a cooling trend. There is little activity from the Sun, a La Nina, a cool PDO in the Pacifac and more, all causing a cooling that is likely to increase. And in the last ten years there has been a huge increase in manmade CO2. All the scientific models predicting the Earth’s temps are now proven wrong.
ALL THE DATA SHOWS THE EARTH IS COOLING
Burning fossil fuels is net new carbon.
Fossil fuels are not new carbon.
@ruckover: “My friends in the Environmental Studies Department talk about how important it is to look at as wide a swath of studies as is possible to make an assessment on climate.”
Yes, but what do your enemies say? More importantly. All studies are not created equal. Some are better than others. The real problem here is that we do not have good data for global measurements before the late 20th century. We don’t know if our these observations reveal a long term trend or are simply noise.
“Also, please note that NASA’s failure to launch was actually a failure by Orbital Sciences, a private company.”
So what? the company was their contractor, they picked the company and set the terms of the contract. They are responsible.
And, I don’t want to punish NASA. I do want the Federal Government to stop throwing my money around like they don’t care about anything other than the re-election of the ruling party. If it makes you feel any better, I also want to shut down the Agriculture Department.
# PeteMoran: “I respectfully suggest you go back and review the first year statistics course you might have taken.”
What I learned in Graduate School was that the mean is the lowest level statistic. Taking the mean of a group of data points reduces the amount of information contained in the data set to a single item, one that cannot be used to generate the data set. Look at it this way. Knowing that the mean of a series is 10, does not tell you whether the series was generated by the function:
y = 10 (-10, 10) or,
y = x + 10 (-10, 10) or,
y = -x + 10 (-10, 10) or,
y = (sin x) + 10 (-2pi, 2pi)
That is why you need to use curve fitting techniques to analyze data sets.
quit picking on the car, and concentrate on finding and promoting the most effective ways to ratchet down greenhouse emissions.
That’s a contradictory statement. Vehicles are the focus because they are among the main culprits.
In any given year, the usage of fossil fuels contributes about 95% of the C02 produced by the US. Of that C02 produced, the primary source is electricity generation, followed by transportation. It’s just a function of arithmetic, not part of a conspiracy to destroy the middle class.
I am also not seeing how drivers are a targeted oppressed class in this discussion. The climate change literature geared toward consumers that I’ve seen does not focus exclusively on cars, but also promotes efficient energy use within the home. Those sorts of suggestions are perfectly reasonable, for as noted, the main culprits are electricity generation and transportation, so it is sensible to discuss how to become more efficient users of electricity and transportation.
People just want easy fixes. They don’t want to hear that they need to sacrifice, or to think before they act. Talking about climate change in this context is like talking about diet and exercise with the obese — they don’t want to hear about it, and they’d rather wallow in their status quo than look in the mirror and take some responsibility.
It should be possible to tell the corpulent that they need to reduce their intake without being told in response that the messengers must hate food. We don’t dislike food, we just dislike the idea of choking on it.
@ Robert Schwartz
Taking the mean of a group of data points reduces the amount of information contained in the data set to a single item…
If I have 4 sets of 10 samples across increasing Y-axis and I tell you that the 10 sample mean also increases X-axis how would you fit your curve?
@ Pch101
Well said. Thank you.
M1EK: Yeah, we’re not going to get everybody to take public transportation, but getting 90% of the people who use SUVs as single-occupant commuters to drive Civics instead would be a huge benefit at fairly little cost compared to the other ways to get that large a reduction in CO2.
I think last summer’s $4-a-gallon for regular unleaded and a collapsing housing market (no home equity to buy a $40,000 SUV on a $60,000 annual income) are doing just that.
PeteMoran: Along with the nutjobs at the NRA, perhaps these people should be “psychoanalyzed and ridiculed”?
When one participates in any discussion involving firearms and the gun control, one quickly discovers that those “nutjobs at the NRA” know what they are talking about, while the gun control advocates range between clueless and laughably ignorant. Trust me…same with the NMA on automotive issues.
I’d have to agree with M1EK’s take on this, cars are the low hanging fruit, for sound political and economic reasons. Unfortunately, any successes acheived on this front will fuel a close-minded approach to future green initiatives (to the detriment of more efficacious alternatives). No one likes to fail, and these groups will continue to seek political victory in the arena’s where they expect to find it again, based on past experience. It hasn’t gotten there yet, but expect reasonable, and laudable, success with changing customer preference (which hasn’t been accomplished yet, but should) to be followed up by unreasonable, politically inefficient and draconian efforts against the automobile (see PETA).
Jack Baruth also comes close to explaning another reason behind the car focus with his puritan comment. I don’t see it as remnants of a puritanical past, but rather as part of the human attraction to judgement and censure (I’d say this is what makes puritanical viewpoints attractive in the first place). It feels good to look at someone and know that what they are doing is wrong, stupid and, more importantly, not up to your standards. That kind of knowledge leads, at it’s root, to an inflated sense of one’s own power. It’s almost impossible to ascribe a human face and identity to the coal industry, or even one particular power plant, so that satisfaction is denied.
Here’s what gets me. Everyone talks about future vehicle CO2 emissions, as if changing new cars solves the problem. A NADA survey from 2002 (below) showed the average age of a vehicle in the US was 8.4 years. If the the new car sales bubble has burst and we are looking at 10m annual sales, its easy to see than number swelling to a decade. So a CAFE target for 2018 won’t represent most vehicles until 2028. And it’s still just a small fraction of CO2 emissions.
But of course only cars need to change. As noted, low hanging fruit. And it makes for good posturing, as politicians (like BO) can make it look like they are doing something by reducing auto CO2 emissions. Because well, if they tried to change the stuff with the most impact…the change would take longer than would be noticed in time to get re-elected. Which is what its all about anyway.
NADA:
http://www.nada.org/NR/rdonlyres/41566B81-7576-47DE-AF46-A59D4803B5AA/0/NADAData_scrappagepdf.pdf
Pch101 – exactly!
I’d like to see more variety in how we do what we do so other technologies could mature faster. Perhaps we gravitate towards singular solutions because industrial scale of manufacturing makes singular solutions cheaper. In the long run though -not an easy thing for the ADD human to grasp- a variety solutions is better. Eggs in one basket.
I think it is ironic that in the world’s largest free economy that we tend to all do some things exactly the same way using the same products from the same sources.
Our government encourages singular solutions. Trains are much more energy efficient yet our tax legislation favors trucks I’ve been told. It’s how taxes are figured on goods being transported. Can anyone explain this better? A fast truck is favored over a slow train. Of course then there is JIT manufacturing. Again tax is calculated on materials on hand vs materials being shipped. It favors the trucks again.
I would like to see more variety in our software, what we drive, how we make our energy, how we consume it, construction, foods, etc. Yes I recognize that today’s economy is more diverse than it has even been. We need to keep looking for new solutions, new options, etc.
I’d like to see alternatives in the area of transportation reach the consumer market so the technology can mature. It’s a shame that the entrenched interests who are best positioned to manufacture such products instead stand in it’s way so they can extract maximum profits from the way things are now and have been for decades. That is we need EVs to come to market. We have the technology but companies like GM and Chevron impede it’s progress in the name of keeping things the same. The problem is that the same is not anywhere good enough anymore.
Yes this is life in a free market where some have enough riches to control the rest of us by exclusion through legislation and scale of manufacturing.
It’s why I don’t like corporate interests that get too large. Microsoft has so much of the software market that it is hard to dislodge them even with a good idea. (Go Mint Linux and PCLinuxOS!). They encourage legislation that impedes competition. They try to squash anyone that gets into their way. Look up the Microsoft Halloween Memo.
Let’s hope with the failure of Detroit that some interesting small players will be able to get some traction and bring alternatives to market. Let’s hope that they concentrate on markets beyond southern California.
I’d like to see the gov’t make a big step forward by using alternative energy in their gov’t vehicles where applicable. EV mail delivery vehicles would be a great step. Solar on government buildings. Wind on government installations such as military bases. As the technology gets used, people get more comfortable with it and it reaches the consumer markets through mainstream outlets.
Phoenix Motor Cars has an excellent product coming to market one of these days. (Been showing a vehicle for a few years). We need these on the road to begin the transition away from fossil fuels where they are unnecessary. It’s not about the low cost of fossil fuels – it’s about the long term consequences of using them decade after decade. The technology in the battery is new enough that these vehicles won’t serve everyone’s needs but they can serve ALOT of people’s needs.
Then maybe we can avoid situations like Iraq. Like doing business with Chavez. Or the Bin Ladens of the world who perhaps would be happier living in caves and riding camels again…
We’ve got to quit making choices based only on the lowest initial price. We’ve got to quit making choices based on what is easiest. That knick-knack at Wal-Mart made in China might be the cheapest but if you have to buy three of them to add up to a sinlge quality product made here in America by Americas – why would you?
We’ve got to raise the collective IQ of America so that people get their heads out of dark places and get to work. Giving them a free ride on the government check isn’t accomplishing anything positive. I don’t mind a short ride on the government check but if the do-nothings of the world face living in an unheated hut without cable TV or a cellphone then maybe at least their children will have the gumption to get off their duff and get an education and do better. That’s why the Chinese and Indian kids stand such a great change of kicking the American youth’s asses. They have plenty of examples of poverty around them to remind them of what NOT getting an education holds for them.
We’ve become complacent with a lifestyle that can’t last forever. How much resources have we consumed in the past 150 years? How much have we changed our world? Can we expect this to continue for another 150 years? Hardly.
I am concerned about the world we leave our kids. Of course we live in a world where so many people have so many personal problems that overshadow anything so intangible as what their offspring’s lives might be like good or bad 100 years from now.
They are focused on their needs and wants right now – not what consequence their choices will have 100 years from now. In this regard you can call me a liberal I suppose but I don’t care. We as humans are sloppy and it takes a few neatfreaks to step up and usher everyone to clean up a little.
I will seriously be looking at the Nissan and Phoenix Motor Cars EVs promised to be on the market in a couple of years. Of course the PMC products have been promised for a couple of years already… VBG! I can spend $40K fueling a modern vehicle or I can spend $40K on a vehicle that takes much less to fuel and will likely last MUCH longer simply because it is a more simple product to maintain. Its a vehicle I can fuel at home with a solar roof. Yes, I’ll take two – thanks.
FWIW I installed two new oxygen sensors and a new cat on my daily driver yesterday. Clean air is important to me… (Really, the cat had a meltdown at 160K miles and both sensors were failing. VBG!)
The Sierra Club thought leaders live on the coasts. They’re eco-weenies who are completely out of touch how those of us who live, or have lived (my case) in middle America. Which is most of us. They don’t have any idea how it is that we need cars to go to work, church, the grocery store, etc. In other words “live.”
So they look at our lifestyle, which is a situation that is totally incomprehensible to them, and blame our cars for everything. Why? Because if you take away our cars, then that forces us to live in places like San Francisco (their headquarters) or New York City or places where, for the most part, we don’t want to live. Or can’t afford to live. Or could afford to live if we wanted roommates. But we grew up, and said, “Roommates are for college!”
The reason I know this is that I live in a suburb of New York City and have had these discussions of what life is like in the suburbs of Atlanta, or Dallas, or Chicago, or Los Angeles.
And they look at me like I’m telling them what life is like on Mars. And they blame The Car for all of it. Take away the car, and it all changes.
Fossil fuels are not new carbon.
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re right. It was only sequestered millions of years ago, when the climate was completely different. My bad, I completely misunderstood.
You’re just baiting me, right?
@PeteMoran: “Along with the nutjobs at the NRA, perhaps these people should be “psychoanalyzed and ridiculed”?”
It is unwise to ridicule heavily armed nutjobs. “Enviromentalists” are weenies who can be ridiculed.
“If I have 4 sets of 10 samples across increasing Y-axis and I tell you that the 10 sample mean also increases X-axis how would you fit your curve?”
Are you trying to prove that you have no idea what you are talking about? However I can assure that the one that is making a gooey mess in your hands is not M&Ms.
Which is most of us. They don’t have any idea how it is that we need cars to go to work, church, the grocery store, etc. In other words “live.”
It’s not their fault that you’re living a lifestyle that may or may not be sustainable. Large, low-density suburban communities are not sustainable, and simply aren’t done where gas isn’t effectively free.
Put it to you this way: why should we subsidize your lifestyle choice?
Gas isn’t “effectively free” in the United States. Lower in cost is not the equivalent of free.
psharjinian: Put it to you this way: why should we subsidize your lifestyle choice?
Um, that’s what many people say about welfare…including my wife, who actually WORKS with low-income people, and was a social worker.
Robert Schwartz: very funny line about my enemies in the Environmental Studies department. As you well know, all academics get along with each other, and there is never a negative word voiced towards another faculty member (but we talk absolute trash towards administrators, for they have actual, useful skills).
bluecon: but there is a huge amount of science that points to warming, so it is a bit disingenuous to make a blanket statement that all the science points in one way. Also, the 1936 heat wave confuses weather for climate.
Let me just say to everyone here, that I appreciate that a variety of views can be posted at this site without there being personal attacks. It is nice to see respectful discussion at a website.
Gas isn’t “effectively free” in the United States. Lower in cost is not the equivalent of free.
True, I was being hyperbolic. But the point is that Americans do not bear what I would call a fair cost for their poor urban development.
Um, that’s what many people say about welfare…including my wife, who actually WORKS with low-income people, and was a social worker.
Couldn’t resist, couldya?
My point is that choosing the live in a non-urban community is as much a choice, and carries as much a cost, as choosing to live in high-density urban environments. Saying that coasters or greens “hate freedom” yet denying that said freedom has a cost is disingenuous.
I happen to think a lot of things could be improved through urban planning that wasn’t driven either by cost or by a need to isolate ourselves from others. Integrated communities** not only have lower energy requirements (because you can walk from A to B), they’re socially and economically healthy as well. I understand they’re not everyone’s choice, but they are the lowest “cost”, if you think about cost in holistic terms.
** And no, gentrified urban living is not integrated, no matter what condo-dwellers would like to think.
psharjinian: Couldn’t resist, couldya?
Sorry, but it brings up a larger point.
Namely, you can’t keep telling a large portion of middle-class people, who are basically the backbone of this country (this, after all, is what Obama has said repeatedly), that they are imposing unfair costs on the rest of society, while completely ignoring the choices made by other segments of society, and THEIR impact on others. And you can’t look solely at costs. Look at how PRODUCTIVE people are when they are using resources. Middle class people who live in the suburbs are generating a very large portion of taxes paid.
@ruckover
The science may point to warming but the fact is the Earth is in a cooling phase and it is cooling. The 1930’s were a very warm decade and there is a huge amount of evidence of the warming. Just that it is more convenient for AGW science to ignore the evidence.
psarhjinian
You’re just baiting me, right?
No, just pointing out the facts.
Then think of the miles thickness of carboniferous rock that forms the continent.
The carbon from burning fossil fuels is miniscule.