Global Warming Debate

[camaraderie]

Jody...your de-buttal on tree rings was great...just the sort of stuff we need to discuss. Did you happen to read the beginning of the article you linked to where the tree ring data was being used to rebut the notion of the midieval warming period that "deniers" claim? Inconvenient to GW's if humans actually lived in warmer times without a problem. You see...THAT tree ring data was used in the UN's IPCC report to justify a rising global temperature and knock down the midieval warming theory. SO...choice...tree ring data IS or IS NOT useful in describing past climate. I will be happy to agree with you that it is NOT if you want to throw out that part of the UN's justification of warming and Al Gore's film piece on it.

The IPCC tree ring data is bad for other reasons anyway but I will not bore you with the details of bristlecone pines as a temperature proxy.

So...if we do NOT have tree rings to use to prove temperature rise...what DO we have? Well we have other proxies like ice core data, sea sediment, pollen layers in freshwater lakes etc.
Conveniently Dr. Craig Loehe decided to take a look at a bunch of other scientists proxy data in 2007 and combine them all to try to reconstruct the temperature record. Guess what...
"In this study, eighteen 2000-year-long series were obtained that were not based on tree ring data. Data in each series were smoothed with a 30-year running mean. All data were then converted to anomalies by subtracting the mean of each series from that series. The overall mean series was then computed by simple averaging. The mean time series shows quite coherent structure. The mean series shows the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) quite clearly, with the MWP being approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values at these eighteen sites."

In English...it agrees with the tree ring data I gave you from Tibet even though 18 other non-tree ring proxies were used to construct the data. It was warmer in the middle ages than it is now. We survived. Here's the graph from the study...note how it compares to the Tibet tree ring data.
proxies.JPG

http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025 to download the paper which was published in Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058.

[denby]

Cam, oh Cam,
your letting facts get in the way again. You don't believe in manbearpig?

[bestfriend]

Look at it this way. Global warming or not, our fault or not, the alternatives to the way we do things now may not have a better end result, but don't you agree that it would revitalize our economy? This is something we could take the lead in, but we are digging our heels into the ground.

[sailaway21]

Bestfriend,
Why need there be any incentive other than the market? It shouldn't be government's job to decide for you what is economically feasible. Why should my tax dollars go to pay for your wind turbine and solar panels in Arizona? If they are efficient and there's money to be saved, you and the resident's of Arizona will be reaping the rewards. Are you going to send me a portion of the money saved? The bottom line with a lot of these things is that they are nowhere near as efficient as we'd like and there are political considerations as well. Just look up the difficulties being encountered by those endeavoring to build a wind farm off Cape Cod. NIMBY

Here in Michigan we went through the solar panel craze back in the seventies and eighties. All the salesmen were long gone before somebody figured out that Michigan doesn't get nearly enough sun to make the things work sufficient to even cover their cost. We do do a fair amount of ground water heat and the more usual geo-thermal.

Big oil has, contrary to your assertion, been highly ingenious. In an amazingly short period of time, in technological terms, they have provided you with an abundance of gas and fuel for your vehicle right in your very own neighborhood. You've got your pick of brands close by. Likewise, they've run natural gas lines throughout your neighborhood which means that you don't even have to have a truck come by and refill your natural gas or propane tank. Ingenuity? They won't let the oil companies drill offshore of your state so some of them drill in Long Beach and angle out five miles underground to offshore oil. Pretty ingenious, I'd say.

They drill for oil on the North Slope of Alaska and pump it through a pipeline over a thousand miles long to Prince William Sound. Then they load that oil and come down and moor off Carpenteria and pump it ashore to power plants. The alternative would be a limited shipping season to the north of Alaska in very small ships because there's no Californian port with a controlling depth of over forty feet. Pretty ingenious, I'd say.

The natural gas you heat with burns far cleaner than the wood stoves our great grandparents used. In 1936 the life expectancy of an American male was 63 years of age, today over 80 years. We get to worry about diesel fumes, radon, and the like today because we've improved the efficiencies of the other pollution emitters so much. We also live a great deal longer because of an improved diet. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables that the internal combustion engine has made sure are avialable at out local grocery year round. Pretty ingenious, I'd say.

And all those things were accomplished because of "greed". Somebody saw a way to make a buck off of something someone else wanted. And let's not forget that damn few of those people would be living in Arizona had not the petrochemical industry aided in the invention of air-conditioning.

Gas prices seem pretty high right now. But, every time I fill up, I see somebody walking out with a bottle of water that they just paid double the price per gallon for than they did their gas. And they could have taken a cup in and filled it from the sink nest to the coffee pot for free! Now there's your standard of living. We're willing to pay almost two bucks for something we get out of our tap at home for so little they have trouble metering it.

Capitalism has been very good to us. The greed, if there is any, is in expecting the government to do more for us than we're willing to pay for our ownselves.

[sailaway21]

BF,
I agree with your last point on revitalizing our economy. Instead of exporting our nuclear power technology all over the world I think we should build a few here. Let's start tomorrow.

[bestfriend]

So there are no government incentives in the oil industry? Your tax dollars already subsidize lots of other states for things like corn and beef.
If democracy and capitalism works as it is designed, what benefits one state should benefit all states. Drilling for oil and running pipes is the same thing they have been doing for nearly a century. Diesels were initially run off peanut oil. It took almost one hundred years to go back to that. Thats not ingenuity, thats lack of foresight. In less than half a century, the computer that filled a room now fits in your phone, now thats ingenuity. I see houses that run completely off the grid. The government does nothing more than give you a one time tax break. Would that not stimulated the economy more than a $500 rebate? A new industry is created and supported, jobs are created, a future is made. Twenty or thirty years a go we did not have the technology to make those products economically feasible, now we do, or in some cases we are really close. Not every solution will work in every climate. Gas and oil may well be the best solution for your area, while other solutions may work better in other areas. I think what I am trying to say is that there is no single solution. All of these things we are talking about need to be used in unison.

[bestfriend]

Originally Posted by sailaway21

BF,
I agree with your last point on revitalizing our economy. Instead of exporting our nuclear power technology all over the world I think we should build a few here. Let's start tomorrow.

Oh man, you're gonna take flack on that one. (not from me though)

[camaraderie]

BF...the "we subsidize other stuff" argument doesn't cut it. We shouldn't subsidize anything. That's MY money they're giving away and YOURS. We can decide what WE want to subsidize with those bucks a lot better than the goverment....so maybe you can put in those solar panels with your share and I can drive over in my RV with mine!!

[bestfriend]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

BF...the "we subsidize other stuff" argument doesn't cut it. We shouldn't subsidize anything. That's MY money they're giving away and YOURS. We can decide what WE want to subsidize with those bucks a lot better than the goverment....so maybe you can put in those solar panels with your share and I can drive over in my RV with mine!!

Yes, very good point. I guess we are mixing things here too, subsidies and tax breaks. But I am not interested in big government, it only creates big mess. I have first hand knowledge of that here in SF. There are so many government hand outs and all it does is attract more losers that want a free hand out. Sf is the far end of the spectrum that most people don't get to see. The real failure of too many government programs and special interest groups.

[sailaway21]

I think where I come in on this is from the creeping nature of government subsidies and tax breaks. We start out with a tax break, which I am inherently for in most any manifestation, for those in the northern climes to insulate their homes. We justify it to all by the notion that it will decrease the demand for heating oil and gas. (The fact that the opposite often occurs is another matter.) It's only a short step from there to offering a tax break to air-conditioner owners in the southwest of the US to upgrade to more efficient a/c units. Soon we're offering tax breaks to everything and everyone under the sun for anything related to energy conservation. And, of course, we must support a large, unwieldy government bureaucracy to administer this program. After we've upgraded, insulated, solarized, and wind-turbined everything from my house, your house, and the hen-house do we think that that government bureaucracy is going to downsize itself? the short answer is that we still have the Rural Electrification Commision dating from the 1930's I believe whose mission was to aid the electrification of the midwest. What they're doing today defies any amount of congressional inquiry or DOE investigation.

We know how to get rid of the use of fossil fuels. We simply tax the daylights out of them. We could even have cars that get well over 50 mpg by next year, if we remove the weight inducing safety standards on them. Our problem with taxing fossil fuels is that it is a political decision with wide ranging consequences. Would the tax apply only to personal vehicles or should we require ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, or over-the-road truckers to pay the same high tax? All of these are reasonable requests that have a valid interest in having low priced fuel to benefit the overall needs of the American citizen. The other side of that coin is that we remove any incentive to make those vehicles with an exemption more fuel efficient. In my opinion, the market will do the same job far more effectively for us.

I was stunned to read, a couple of years ago, one of GM's VP's state that he did not anticipate a decline in demand for SUV's based on the rapidly increasing gas prices. Which goes some distance in explaining why GM is in the fix they're in. It's not like GM should be producing cars that get 100 mpg when everyone wants a big 'ol SUV and can afford to buy one. That would be foolish. But you'd think that a company that had a great deal of trouble weathering the last energy crisis would at least have some R&D going on and a few prototypes being worked on in the eventuality of a market disruption in oil. But the market is already dealing with their lack of foresight.

The government offered tax incentives for us to buy Prius hybrids and the like. It was so popular that most of the auto companies making such cars are discontinuing them. Without the subsidy, they do not even make economic sense for what they are. You'll likely see the same with ethanol.

Which brings us to the DOE, the Dept. of Energy. The DOE has to rank right up there with the Department of Education as one of the most useless government departments. Everybody wants an energy policy out of them. Of course they want an energy policy that serves their interests. I'd offer that we have an inherent energy policy, ably administered by the market, that works quite well. I pay the guy at the pump to put gas in my tank. I also send of a check each month for some other guy's to pump natural gas to my house. That's my policy. My neighbor has a similar one. My father in law has a different one-he heats with wood and cooks on electric. He makes a market choice to cut and split wood a couple of weeks a year. I work a few hours a month and pay somebody else for my energy.

I've considered alternatives to the energy I use now but the efficiency and capital costs do not justify them at this point. Right now I have a far better chance of buying that Flicka I want if I keep heating with gas than if I erect a wind turbine in my front yard and fill my basement with storage batteries. And it's all a moot point because neither one of those two things is going to happen before my wife get's kitchen cabinets and her roast the whole cow at once oven in the house. (g)