Global Warming Debate

[bestfriend]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Bob Lutz, one of the really true "car-guys", is exec. vp at GM and calls global warming a "crock". Outspokenness on such matters is why every person who enjoys cars for their own sake, listens to Bob Lutz. The man is certifiably smart and well educated but not averse to lighting up some rubber on Woodward Avenue. All in all, my kind of guy!

Here's the story:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...BrandChannel=0

Me too, Bob Lutz is great.

[denby]

Hell, another good reason to buy GM. I have 9 GM trucks and cars, Just bought my wife a Solstice.

[chucklesR]

Speaking of math not adding up; Obama on this one:

From : http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/07...ama_factsheet/
"

# Calls for 36 billion gallons of biofuels to be used in the U.S. each year by 2022 and 60 billion gallons of biofuels to be used in the U.S. each year by 2030.

In 2005, the U.S. consumed 4 billion gallons of ethanol, and 140 billion of oil.
We also produced about 11 billion bushels of corn that year.
Calculators anyone?

We don't make enough corn, in fact it would take about 36% of the U.S. land mass to make enough corn at current bushel per acre yields (okay, it can get better with more chemicals and such, but isn't it supposed to be green?).


The entire corn yield of these the United States (11 billion bushels) would yield a bumper crop of exactly 24.5 billion gallons of ethanol. Hope you southern democrats aren't too hooked on corn bread.
No more corn chips, corn dogs etc...

Oh, and ethanol is only 10-15% better than using fossil fuels in the production of greenhouse gas.

Maybe I should double post this to the GW thread.

[camaraderie]

Chilling Effect

Global warmists try to stifle debate.

Wall St. Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1203...olitical_diary

..."
Let's hope Mr. Lomborg is wrong in his fear that the media are uninterested in showcasing a real debate on climate change. The proof may be found next week, when hundreds of scientists, economists and policy experts who dissent from the "consensus" that climate change requires radical measures will meet in New York to discuss the latest scientific, economic and political research on climate change. Five tracks of panels will address paleoclimatology, climatology, global warming impacts, the economics of global warming and political factors. It will be keynoted by Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who has argued that economic growth is most likely to create the innovations and know-how to combat any challenges climate change could present in the future. (Information on the conference is here.)
The conference is being organized by the free-market Heartland Institute and 49 other co-sponsors, including a dozen from overseas. Heartland president Joseeph Bast says its politically incorrect purpose is to "explain the often-neglected 'other side' of the climate change debate. This will be their chance to speak out. It will be hard for journalists and policy makers to ignore us."
I wonder. Already, environmental groups have sent out their opinion to their media friends that the conference is simply a platform for corporate apologists and can safely be ignored. One group alleges the conference will have "no real scientists" present despite an impressive array of speakers such as Patrick Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and Willie Soon, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics."



More at the link. Should be an interesting conference!

[chucklesR]

The only problem I have is that they link the political with the science. I realize in this world we must do so, but it just makes it sleazy and greasy to me

[PBzeer]

I assume you mean both sides of the issue there Chuckles. After all, the definitive report by the IIPC is written by buearucrats, not scientists.

[sailaway21]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

Good post, Windy. Very well stated.

sck5,
Here's a couple of thoughts.
Smoking doesn't cause cancer. Smoking is assosciated with higher rates of cancer. We don't know what causes cancer.

Cancer research, btw, has been the biggest fraud ever perpetuated on the American taxpayer. We have spent trillions and we are absolutely no closer to discovering what causes a cell to turn cancerous Only now are a few scientists debating whether or not our entire approach to cancer research has been misguided, ie...we've been looking in the wrong areas all along. This is what you get when you have government research. Research that sets a course they are powerless to change. I might add that the medical community, including the pharmaceutical's, has no real interest in what actual causes cancer, all the money is in treating the symptoms! Think about it. You could even expand the topic to AIDS research which has followed a similar path, on your dime.

You are right in saying that a transition will likely be abrupt to oil's replacement. The market will make it abrupt. Oil will either become too expensive or a lower cost solution will be found. Simple and possibly an abrupt solution.

In the meantime, let's consider government's role in the matter. Because THAT'S what we're really talking about. Oil companies are actively researching alternative energy sources, including solar. Why wouldn't they? they're in the energy business, not necessarily just the oil business, and if you were confronted with, if not geological, then political reasons that your cash crop was about to expire you'd be looking for something new also.

So how does government treat those companies? Well, the hew and cry is for windfall profits taxes. Taxes that otherwise would have been spent on research as well as exploration. Instead, what you are espousing, is that government do the research. As mentioned above, we don't have a real good track record on government doing those things. More to the specific point, perhaps you'd like to look up the history of the synthetic fuels program from the 1970's. You'll find massive amounts of money, perhaps in the trillions, invested by government in oil alternatives. You know what it got us? It got us $10/Qt synthetic motor oil that still is uncompetetive with natural motor oil, thirty years later! This is not a NASA moonshot project with certain limited goals. This is a project, the quest for a viable alternative fuel, that is going to take unbelievably massive amounts of money to be invested. And most of that money is going to be wasted. Even wasted by private industry. What incentive is there for private industry to waste such massive amounts of money? Profit, the same incentive that inspired John D. Rockefeller to waste massive amounts of money to provide oil as an alternative fuel to Americans. And the breakthrough, assuming there is one, will likely come out of some future Bill Gate's garage! Please don't tell me your solution is to start searching out and subsidizing the nascent Bill Gates' of energy!

I've posted on bio-fuels earlier and if you have not read it, I'd recommend the excellent link detailing the economies of them. Cellulose, smellulose! Brazil is just a notch above a third world country. Does anyone have a calculator big enough to conceive of the amount of infastructure change that would be required to just collect, sort, and process all the available and viable sources of cellulose in the US? Here's another dirty little secret; recycling doesn't work. Except in a few narrowly defined areas, we spend more on pick-up, sorting, and processing than the cost of the raw materials. The vast majority of our garbage still goes to land-fills. Did you ever have a burn-barrel out back when you were a kid to burn the stuff that you didn't want to pay the garbage man to haul away? I did, and I can tell you that it took a bunch of time and effort to sort out the plastic, the glass, and the cans from the burnables. Nobody sorts their garbage that way anymore and you can't make them at double the disposal rates. And you can't pay someone to do it for them and make a profit on the job.

Guess what? Ragnar is correct. The implementation of the Global Warming action policy is the implementation of the institution's of the statist left. some even call it, Liberal Fascism. It is anti-American. It involves an elite few making far sweeping pronouncements and decisions for the rest of us and it will accomplish those things at the point of the government sword. It is cloaked in the language of the magnitude of the problem and the need for quick and massive action. The only time in the course of human events that that logic has had any rationality has been during times of invasion and war. That's why the terms, "War on Poverty, war on this or that" are so popular. Because those terms are rightly understood as signifying the rightful actions of government. Except there is no history of government EVER fighting a war on anything, other than one of a military nature, and winning. The founding father's knew this. That's why they proscribed the powers of the federal government so severely. The natural inclination of any government is to be despotic and that's why our Constitution is such a marvelous document-it's kept us largely free.

This is NOT an environmental debate nor an energy debate. those problems will be solved, to the extent they even exist. This is a political debate. And it's not even about your ability to buy and drive an SUV. That's about the last thing they'll take away from you. At that point it will be easy because you'll have already surrendered your freedom and your liberty, VOLUNTARILY!

Chuck,
I think you'll find my above post deals with that nasty political angle you so revile. (g) In short, the science is unsettled, therefore the ONLY debate is political. And we'd best hope that conferences like the one posted by Camaraderie grab some attention because, last I looked, all the remaining canidates for the presidency are buying into the GW scam. This is just the type of area where I fear John McCain's notion of bipartisanship could prove dangerous.

[RAGNAR]

zzzz

[chucklesR]

the massive tongue in cheek was intended Ragnar, read the letters to the editors 4/5 of the way down:
Berkeley Daily Planet

meanwhile if you have time read the rest of the letters to the editor just on the link provided and you will see that the residents of the city are up in arms at the silliness that is the city of Berkeley.

[RAGNAR]

zzzz