"It's really a fantastic chain reaction, all these good things happening at once," Kruger tells me. He has also successfully introduced natural gas--a ubiquitous and generally cheap fuel--into a diesel-burning engine, which likewise doubles the mileage while slashing emissions. In another system, he uses heat from the diesel engine to vaporize ethanol to the point where it can be injected into the diesel combustion chambers as a booster, with similar emissions-cutting effects.
Goodwin began building on Kruger's model. In 2005, he set to work adapting his own H1 Hummer to burn a combination of hydrogen and biodiesel. He installed a Duramax in the Hummer and plopped a carbon-fiber tank of supercompressed hydrogen into the bed. The results were impressive: A single tank of hydrogen lasted for 700 miles and cut the diesel consumption in half. It also doubled the horsepower. "It reduces your carbon footprint by a huge, huge amount, but you still get all the power of the Duramax," he says, slapping the H1 on the quarter panel. "And you can feed it hydrogen, diesel, biodiesel, corn oil--pretty much anything but water."
Two years ago, Goodwin got a rare chance to show off his tricks to some of the car industry's most prominent engineers. He tells me the story: He was driving a converted H2 to the SEMA show, the nation's biggest annual specialty automotive confab, and stopped en route at a Denver hotel. When he woke up in the morning, there were 20 people standing around his Hummer. Did I run over somebody? he wondered. As it turned out, they were engineers for GM, the Hummer's manufacturer. They noticed that Goodwin's H2 looked modified. "Does it have a diesel engine in it?"
"Yeah," he said.
"No way," they replied.
He opened the hood, "and they're just all in and out and around the valves and checking it out," he says. They asked to hear it run, sending a stab of fear through Goodwin. He'd filled it up with grease from a Chinese restaurant the day before and was worried that the cold morning might have solidified the fuel. But it started up on the first try and ran so quietly that at first they didn't believe it was really on. "When you start a diesel engine up on vegetable oil," Goodwin says, "you turn the key, and you hear nothing. Because of the lubricating power of the oil, it's just so smooth. Whisper quiet. And they're like, 'Is it running? Yeah, you can hear the fan going.'"
One engineer turned and said, "GM said this wouldn't work."
"Well," Goodwin replied, "here it is."
Goodwin's feats of engineering have become gradually more visible over the past year. Last summer, Imperium Renewables contacted MTV's show Pimp My Ride about creating an Earth Day special in which Goodwin would convert a muscle car to run on biodiesel. The show chose a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower. As a stunt, MTV drag-raced the Impala against a Lamborghini on California's Pomona Raceway. "The Impala blew the Lamborghini away," says Kevin Kluemper, the lead calibration engineer for GM's Allison transmission unit, who'd flown down to help with the conversion. Schwarzenegger, who was on the set that day, asked Goodwin on the spot to convert his Wagoneer to biodiesel.
Observers of Goodwin's work say his skill lies in an uncanny ability to visualize a mechanical system in precise detail, long before he picks up a wrench. (Goodwin says he does much of his mental work during long drives.) "He has talent unknown to any mortal," says Mad Mike, Pimp My Ride's host. "He has this ability to see things so exactly, and I still don't know how he does it."
For his part, Goodwin argues he's merely "a problem solver. Most people try to make things more complicated than they are." He speaks of the major carmakers with a sort of mild disdain: If he can piece together cleaner vehicles out of existing GM parts and a bit of hot-rod elbow grease, why can't they bake that kind of ingenuity into their production lines? Prod him enough on the subject and his mellowness peels away, revealing a guy fired by an almost manic frustration. "Everybody should be driving a plug-in vehicle right now," he complains, in one of his laconic engineering lectures, as we wander through the blistering Kansas heat to a nearby Mexican restaurant. "I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.
"Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to," he adds.
In reality, Goodwin's work has begun to influence some of Detroit's top auto designers, but through curious and circuitous routes. In 2005, Tom Holm, the founder of EcoTrek, a nonprofit that promotes the use of alternative fuels, heard about Goodwin through the Hummer-junkie grapevine and hired him. When Holm showed GM the vehicles Goodwin converted, the company was duly impressed. Internally, Hummer executives had long been looking for a way to blunt criticism of the H2's gas-guzzling tendencies and saw Goodwin's vehicles as an object lesson in what was possible. So GM decided to flip the switch: It announced the same year that, beginning in 2008, it would convert its gasoline Hummers to run on ethanol; by 2010, it said, Hummers would be biodiesel-compatible.
"It was an influence," concedes Hummer general manager Martin Walsh, of the EcoTrek vehicles. "We wanted to be environmentally responsible by having engines in Hummers that run on renewable fuels." But until I contacted Hummer for this story, GM didn't know that the man behind those machines was none other than Goodwin.
GM's commitment is a start, however halting. Overall, though, Detroit still seems to be all but paralyzed by the challenges of fuel economy, emissions, and alternative fuels. And it's not just about greed or laziness: Talk to car-industry experts, and they'll point out a number of serious barriers to introducing radically new alternative-fuel vehicles on a scale that will make a difference. One of the highest is that low-emission fuels--biodiesel, ethanol, electricity, hydrogen, all of which account for less than 3% of the nation's fuel supply--just aren't widely available on American highways. This creates a chicken-and-egg problem. People won't buy alternative-fuel cars until it's easy to fill them up, but alternative fuel makers won't ramp up production until there's a viable market.
Goodwin admits all these things are true but believes the country could be weaned off gasoline in a three-step process. The first would be for Detroit to aggressively roll out diesel engines, much as Europe has already begun to do (some 50% of all European cars run diesel). In a single stroke, that would improve the nation's mileage by as much as 40%, and, because diesel fuel is already widely available, drivers could take that step with a minimum of disruption. What's more, given that many diesel engines can also run homegrown biodiesel, a mass conversion to diesel would help kick-start that market. (This could have geopolitical implications as well as environmental and economic ones: The Department of Transportation estimated in 2004 that if we converted merely one-third of America's passenger cars and light trucks to diesel, we'd reduce our oil consumption by up to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day--precisely the amount we import from Saudi Arabia.)
The second step in Goodwin's scheme would be to produce diesel-electric hybrid cars. This would double the mileage on even the biggest diesel vehicles. The third phase would be to produce electric hybrids that run in "dual fuel" mode, burning biodiesel along with hydrogen, ethanol, natural gas, or propane. This is the concept Goodwin is proving out in his turbine-enhanced H3 Hummer and in Neil Young's Lincoln: "At that point, your mileage just goes really, really high, and your emissions are incredibly low," he says. Since those vehicles can run on regular diesel or biodiesel--and without any alternative fuel at all, if need be--drivers wouldn't have to worry about getting stranded on the interstate. At the same time, as more and more dual-fuel cars hit the road, they would goose demand for genuinely national ethanol, hydrogen, and biodiesel grids.
For Goodwin, navigating this process is all about imagination and adaptability. "The point is to design cars that are flexible," he says. "You'll see a change in how vehicles are fueled in the future. Which fuel source will be the exclusive one or the one that'll take over the petroleum base is, you know, anybody's guess, so it's like the wild, wild West of fuel technology right now. I think it'll be a combination between a few different fuels. I know hydrogen will definitely come around."
Imagination and vision, of course, are often rewarded. As global pressure increases on the United States to reduce our carbon emissions, those rewards are likely to get juicier. Under some versions of legislation being considered in Congress, for example, companies voluntarily deploying superefficient vehicles in large fleets could be awarded substantial offsets. Take DHL, the FedEx rival: Goodwin says his company, SAE Energy, is negotiating with the shipper to convert 800 of its vehicles to dual fuel. "We could get them an offset of something like 70 cents a gallon," Goodwin says, "and reduce their cost of fuel by 50%."
Industry insiders and observers agree with many of Goodwin's prescriptions, particularly his concept of fuel flexibility. "We have to have alternatives," says Beau Boeckmann, vice president of California's Galpin Motors, the largest Ford dealership in the country, who recently partnered with Goodwin to convert a 2008 F450 truck to hydrogen and biodiesel. "Only with a combination of things can we get alternative fuels off the ground." Boeckmann believes hydrogen is the true "silver bullet" for ending greenhouse gases but thinks it'll take more than a decade to figure out how to create and distribute it cheaply. Mary Beth Stanek, GM's director of environment, energy, and safety policy, also agrees with the multifuel approach--and points out that this is precisely how Brazil weaned itself from regular gasoline. "They pull up to the pump, and they've got a whole bunch of different choices," she notes. She, too, predicts diesel will make a comeback because of its inherent fuel efficiency: "You will see more vehicles going back to diesel over a lot of different lines."
Yet in reality, American carmakers seem conspicuously slow on the uptake. Stanek is about as ardent a fan of alternative fuels as you're likely to find inside GM, but even she admits no one there is seriously thinking of abandoning the gasoline engine anytime soon. The 300-million-gallon U.S. biodiesel business is a fraction of the 12-billion-gallon ethanol one. And Detroit is extremely cautious about what the market can bear.
A Detroit carmaker does, of course, have to worry about selling millions of cars at reasonable prices. But we've been hearing this refrain for a long, long time. And with European and Japanese carmakers driving ever harder into our market--and with Chrysler having become just another meal for Cerberus Capital--this hardly seems like the time to be overly cautious. (Those ultralow-emission Mercedes BlueTec diesels, for example, include a four-wheel-drive sedan that gets 37 mpg and goes from zero to 60 in 6.6 seconds.) Moreover, after decades of consumer apathy, improving fuel economy and reducing carbon output are becoming urgent national priorities. The green groundswell has arrived, and, given the stakes, anyone who ignores it does so at his peril. If Detroit can't sell diesel now--especially a clean, high-performance, money-saving diesel--it never will.
With U.S. carmakers being stripped for parts, now is hardly the time for them to play it safe.
Goodwin, perhaps, can afford to be a visionary. He has the luxury of converting cars for fancy clients who'll pay handsomely to drive on higher moral ground. (He charges $28,000 for a "basic H2 conversion to diesel--custom concept cars cost far more.") The future of the American car will likely be won by an automaker that can split the difference--one that may innovate more slowly than Goodwin would like, but a hell of a lot faster than the Big Three.
Goodwin himself seems more oracle than implementer, slightly unsure of how his ideas could be brought to the masses. He's working on patenting aspects of his and Kruger's dual-fuel work and would love to license it to the big carmakers. But the truth is, he's a mechanic's mechanic--happiest when he's solving some technical puzzle. He loves getting his hands dirty, "throwing wrenches around" in his shop, pioneering some weird new way to fuel a car. Today, he's thinking about taking his wife's Infiniti, outfitting it with a tank of ether, and powering the engine via blasts of compressed air in the cylinders. "Zero emissions!" he crows. It's the visionary inventor's curse: constantly distracted by shiny objects.
Goodwin eyes the turbine, which he has dragged out to the center of the floor. Just for kicks, he says, he's thinking of mounting it on a wheelie board and firing it up. "I'd love to see how fast that goes," he says. "I'm just not sure how I'm going to steer it."
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the IPCC has delivered another warning of impending doom. This time, it has to do with the world's oceans' ability to absorb carbon dioxide. While I am not qualified to get into the science of this, I think it is instructive to dissect how the message is being delivered to the masses. For this, I'll use the Drudge-linked article from The Independent, a newspaper from the UK.
As might be expected with any article, the headline attempts to grab the reader's attention. In this case the headline reads, "A world dying, but can we unite to save it?" The "we" does not mean to imply that all the people of the UK should unite.
This is a global vision; the "we" is global. The mission is messianic -- save the world -- which is all fine and good as long as the reader, or the believer, truly understands the intent of such an outlook.
In brief, the point of the IPCC's warning is that as the oceans soak up carbon dioxide (the article claims 500 billion tons since the industrial revolution), they become more acidic. In doing so, the life forms therein must adapt or die, and therefore the crisis.
Just like previous reports, this one was
"[d]rawn up by more than 2,500 of the world's top scientists and their governments, and agreed last week by representatives of all its national governments."
That means this is really not just science, but politicized science. It is the pursuit of "truth" so long as the agreed upon "truth" fits into the political machinations of the signatory governments. To mistake the IPCC reports with pure science is, by the reports' own admission, to only read half of it.
The political aspect of the IPCC report is clearly spelled out in the article itself. It "is designed to give impetus to the negotiations" which will happen in Bali in December.
Again, the report is a premeditated attempt to push parties toward some sort of restrictive program with regard to carbon dioxide emissions. By having its end in sight, presumably before the writing, the IPCC politicizes its science. Whatever happened to the disinterested pursuit of the truth?
Most of the rest of the article is a whirlwind tour of the effects of carbon dioxide-saturated oceans. All of them are alarming. They are meant to be. They are designed to be.
The most curious of these points are the continent-specific predictions, which are saved for the knock-out punch at the end of the article. It claims that the "Greenland ice sheet will virtually completely disappear" and sea levels will rise "by over 30 feet". Bangladesh, which may already be in the reader's mind from the recent typhoon, is posited as a place which would disappear because of this.
The Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef will both be destroyed. The farmlands of the US will dry up. And in Europe, the most curious outcome, "[w]inter sports suffer as less snow falls in the Alps and other mountains." All of this will happen, according to the article.
Though I am not a scientist -- far from it -- I have to wonder why all of the scare-mongering, shock-value numbers and political sign-offs are necessary. If the science really proves beyond a reasonable doubt that we are indeed headed for a climactic apocalypse, then the science should speak for itself.
It should not be "designed" or packaged to influence politicians or the public. It should do so of its own merit. By allowing political influence into the equation, and in abundance at that, reports like this one taint and jumble the common person's view of both scientist and politician.
That is very true. It is called a CO2 sink. Once its at high levels, the water is harder to freeze reducing the glaciers. Glaciers reflect a lot of heat back out of the earth (unless greenhouse gasses are stopping the heat from leaving). When the glaciers melt, the ocean sucks up more of the heat since its dark. more ocean heat means even more melted glaciers and hotter water.. Its a huge circle of crap that is hard to slow down.
"Though I am not a scientist -- far from it -- I have to wonder why all of the scare-mongering, shock-value numbers and political sign-offs are necessary."
Because My dear Mr Bob Lier, of the "American Non-Thinker", the world, at least, the vast right-wing corporate-owned media machine, is populated by shameless propaganda spewing shills who spin and moan and attempt to nullify or dampen down the information in order to pursue their own-goals.
This means that trying to inform a public who have been dumbed down to YOUR required level of stupidity is hard work, unless you "shock and Awe" them. Waking up consciousness in people who have been lulled into conservative stupor by the neocon droning of "The Corporate Thinker" and other similar zionist, or Rupert Moloch-inspired right-wing tripe becomes a battle of wills, and the clock is ticking, and time will wait for no man.
Did public officials' acceptance of erroneous global warming hype about hurricanes delay imposition of water rationing in the South?
All during September and October a common refrain in the Southeast was "I know this is not nice to say for those living on the coast, but could we ever use a big hurricane about now."
The climate change hype has very real costs. In late October news of the extreme drought in the Southeast seemed to burst upon the nation.
This was despite the fact an exceptionally severe drought had been a year in the making. It seemed many government officials had been silently counting upon one or more of those hurricanes the experts had predicted earlier in the year to bring soaking rains to the region. Water restrictions are extremely unpopular.
As long as their remained the hope of hurricanes, I suspect many officials tried not to impose them even as their reservoirs shrunk drastically in the summer's heat.
NASA Debunks Part of Global Warming Myth, Will Media Report It?
Is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration filled with climate change deniers?
Such seems likely to be alleged by hysterical alarmists in the press when and if they read a new study out of NASA which determined that "not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming."
Goes quite counter to all the recent media reports, as well as assertions by Nobel Laureate Al Gore, that low ice conditions in the Arctic are all the fault of that despicable -- albeit essential to life and naturally occurring! -- gas carbon dioxide.
Of course, it's quite unlikely many climate alarmists will even hear about this study, for today's green media wouldn't want to do anything that destroys their illusion that there's a scientific consensus regarding this matter.
As such, consider yourself fortunate to be apprised of the highlights (emphasis added throughout):
A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.
[...]
The team of scientists found a 10-millibar decrease in water pressure at the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole between 2002 and 2006, equal to removing the weight of 10 centimeters (four inches) of water from the ocean. The distribution and size of the decrease suggest that Arctic Ocean circulation changed from the counterclockwise pattern it exhibited in the 1990s to the clockwise pattern that was dominant prior to 1990.
Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.
"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said [James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory].
Somehow I imagine Morison won't be interviewed by any of the major television networks any time soon, especially as the study concluded that this circulation pattern may already be reversing possibly leading to increased ice levels in this area in coming years:
The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, but then varied on more or less decadal time scales, with signs of an underlying upward trend, until the late 1990s, when it again stabilized. During its strong counterclockwise phase in the 1990s, the Arctic environment changed markedly, with the upper Arctic Ocean undergoing major changes that persisted into this century. Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.
Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level. "The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum," he said. "It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again."
Once again, another in a seeming litany of reports emerging offering scientific alternatives for climate change beyond it being all man's fault.
And folks wonder why so many people are skeptical concerning the anthropogenic impact on long-term weather patterns.
Of course, one thing's for certain: this news definitely won't make "An Inconvenient Truth" producer Laurie David happy!
You have no idea how much of a relief that not having to wade through "Amerikkkan Non-Thinker" bullshit brings !
Thank you, Bigdogma, for varying your propaganda.
Oh, one thing seems to be missing from the above article, though, the part where James Morison says;
"Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. "The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world," he said. "
I guess you just forgot to include this. I'd hate to think you left it out in a desperate attempt to spin the article, because that would be a bit "Denier-ish", wouldn't it ?
The report was commissioned by these lovely, independent Government people, their leader handpicked by pResident Boosh, but of course, that has NOTHING to do with the results of their finding in anyway, shape or form downplaying Global Climate change...oh no.
On Feb. 2, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.
The addition of that single word "very" did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests has played a central role in raising the average surface temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900. It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it. In recent months, business groups have banded together to make unprecedented calls for federal regulation of greenhouse gases. The subject had a red-carpet moment when former Vice President Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was awarded an Oscar; and the Supreme Court made its first global warming-related decision, ruling 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency had not justified its position that it was not authorized to regulate carbon dioxide. Read More...
The greenhouse effect has been part of the earth's workings since its earliest days. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane allow sunlight to reach the earth, but prevent some of the resulting heat from radiating back out into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would never have warmed enough to allow life to form. But as ever larger amounts of carbon dioxide have been released along with the development of industrial economies, the atmosphere has grown warmer at an accelerating rate: Since 1970, temperatures have gone up at nearly three times the average for the 20th century.
The latest report from the climate panel predicted that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the level of 1750. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise between 7 to 23 inches, it said, and the changes now underway will continue for centuries to come.
The Bali summit on climate change, which starts next week, will seek to lay the foundations for a new global agreement on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause rising temperatures and climate change. Ambitious targets for emission reduction must be at the heart of that agreement, together with effective market mechanisms that encourage emission trading between countries, rich and poor.
The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay. Climate change is a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen.
The evidence on the seriousness of the risks from inaction is now overwhelming. We risk damage on a scale larger than the two world wars of the past century.
The problem is global and the response must be collaboration on a global scale. The rich countries must lead the way in taking action. And in thinking about global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we must invoke three basic criteria.
The first is effectiveness: the scale of the response must be commensurate with the challenge. This means setting a target for emission reduction that can keep the risks at acceptable levels.
The overall targets of 50% reductions in emissions by 2050 (relative to 1990) agreed at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm last June are essential if we are to have a reasonable chance of keeping temperature increases below 2C or 3C. While these targets involve strong action, they are not overambitious relative to the risk of failing to achieve them.
The second criterion is efficiency: we must keep down the costs of emission reduction, using prices or taxes wherever possible. Emission trading between countries must be a central part of the story. And helping poor countries cover their costs of emission reduction gives them an incentive to join a global deal.
Third, we should be concerned about equity. Our starting point is deeply inequitable with poor countries certain to be hit earliest and hardest by climate change.
But rich countries are responsible for the bulk of past emissions: US emissions are currently more than 20 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per annum, Europe's are 10-15 tonnes, China's five or more tonnes, India's around one tonne, and most of Africa much less than one.
For a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050, the world average per capita must drop from seven tonnes to two or three. Within these global targets, even a minimal view of equity demands that the rich countries' reductions should be at least 80% - either made directly or purchased.
An 80% target for rich countries would bring equality of only the flow of current emissions - around the two to three tonnes per capita level. In fact, they will have consumed the big majority of the available space in the atmosphere.
Rich countries also need to provide funding for three more key elements of a global deal. First, there should be an international programme to combat deforestation, which contributes 15-20% of emissions. For $10bn-$15bn per year, half the deforestation could be stopped.
Second, there needs to be promotion of rapid technological advance to mitigate the effects of climate change. The development of technologies must be accelerated and methods found to promote their sharing.
Carbon capture and storage for coal (CCS) is particularly urgent since coal-fired electric power is currently the dominant technology around the world, and emerging nations will be investing heavily in these technologies. For $5bn a year, it should be possible to create 30 commercial-scale coal-fired CCS stations within seven or eight years.
Finally, rich countries should honour their commitment to 0.7% of GDP in aid by 2015. This would yield increases in flows of $150bn-$200bn per year. The extra costs that developing countries face as a result of climate change are likely to be upwards of $80bn a year, and it is vital that extra resources are available.
This proposed programme of action can be built if rich countries take a lead in Bali on their targets, the promotion of trading mechanisms and funding for deforestation and technology. With leadership and the right incentives, developing countries will join.
The building of the deal, and its enforcement, will come from the willing participation of countries driven by the understanding that action is vital. It will not be a wait-and-see game as in World Trade Organisation talks, where nothing is done until everything is settled.
The necessary commitments are increasingly being demonstrated by political action and elections around the world. A clear idea of where we are going as a world will make action at the individual, community and country level much easier and more coherent.
These commitments must, of course, be translated into action. There is a solution in our hands. It will not be easy to build. But the alternative is too destructive to accept. Bali is an opportunity to draw the outline of a common understanding, which will both guide action now and build towards the deal.
· Sir Nicholas Stern led the Stern review on climate change; today in London he is giving the Royal Economic Society public lecture on Climate Change, Ethics and the Economics of the Global Deal
Anyone care to continue this discussion ?
Especially given the vastly changed economic conditions since last discussed ? I'll start. Seems as though it's urgency has faded worldwide . Other nations wanting out of Kyoto, etc...or a temp hiatus.
Man Nero, forgive me for not reading this entire thread for it's length, but I will share a story you will appreciate. I have a good friend and fellow Aggie who is off the charts right wing. Recently, at an Indian Guides meeting, all the dads were standing around in the back yard solving the worlds' issues. I had just returned from New Orleans which hosted the National Green Builders Conference. Although I am typically conservative, I was excited about what I had learned about high performance homes and earth friendly building techniques. I may have even been feeling a tad bit self righteous. Any way, I heard the peripheral discussion turn to environmentalism. Then I heard my right wing buddy make a comment that made the hair on my newly enlightened back raise. "Environmentalism is just a smoke screen for Socialism." I immediately bowed up to his comment, but quickly caught myself before too much damage had been done to my otherwise conservative reputation. He sensed my displeasure with his comment and adeptly but patronizingly backed off his stance.
Later, as I was continuing my 'green' building education and counting the future profits I would realize when the market turned and I was ready with all the latest cutting edge know how, I realized my true motivation. Then I realized the truth. Envronmentalism is not a smoke screen for Socialism. Environmentalism is a smoke screen for Capitalism!!
Environmentalism is a love of and a respect for the earth, and an expression of our understanding that the earth's health is our health.
BUT, your conclusion that "environmentalism is a smokescreen for capitalism" is spot on even if you didn't mean it this way. It is one of several issues that are mentioned any time conservatives feel boxed in. They pull the rabbit out of the hat (environmentalists...or socialists...or liberals...or code pink...or flip-flop...or "he'll raise your taxes", etc.) in order to denegrate anything progressive. Conservatives just want their own world to stay the same...in their comfort zone. Improvement is frowned upon because it increases costs and is just a big headache for them. They are the ultimate KISS advocates. And smokescreens give them room to wiggle out from under the burden of holding us back. Deep down inside they know they are dead weight around America's neck and having something to rally around, like evil environmentalism, comforts them. If they weren't seeing the world through so much smoke then they might realise that Darwin is working on them.
__________________ "...let us not ignore the truth among ourselves, that we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down."
David Ben-Gurion (the father of Israel) "When fascism comes to America it will be draped in a flag and holding a cross." Sinclair Lewis I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.
"Environmentalism is a smokescreen for socialism" is partially true. What's happened is that the movement has been hijacked by anti-capitalist radicals and it's marginalizing the whole thing. Patrick Moore, the original founder of Greanpeace who left in disgust years ago, said that the fall of communism brought an influx of anti-corporate extremism to the environmental movement because, "suddenly, the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement, bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments. "A lot of those in the peace movement were anti-American and, to an extent, pro-Soviet. By virtue of their anti-Americanism, they tended to sometimes favor the communist approach. A lot of those people, a lot of those social activists, moved into the environmental movement once the peace movement was no longer relevant." Social activists, he suggests, "are now using the rhetoric of environmentalism to promote other collectivist agendas, such as class struggle -- which I personally believe is a legitimate area, but I don't believe it's legitimate to mix it up with environmentalism."
As long as it doesn't "re-go" political it should be OK...
I agree, there's money to be made in this green thingy. But that's not why it got started. What an interesting turn of events. Radical anti-capitalists outfluxed from the soviet implosion cause a new capitalist movement in America. What Irony. Only in America !
Loving mother earth has nothing to do with today's environ-"mentalism".
The only way that someone could NOT think that there is a definate and accelerated climate change taking place, DIRECTLY related to Human influence on the surface of the planet, is if they had spent the last 50 years in a cave, deep underground, with no external sources of information, totally isolated from everything, and in an area which doesn't suffer earthquakes, although that now no longer exists (earthquakes have rocked areas where there is NO recorded or even ancestral memory of seismic events EVER happening...)....
Or someone with a gullibility level approaching 95%, and an IQ that ressembles a soccer match score, and the memory of a goldfish (10 seconds...)
Just in my little corner of the World, we're having the driest end of Fall EVER recorded, in around 3000 years of recorded History, and icebergs have been spotted off the New Zealand coast, in Summer, some up to a km long. The Polar caps have NEVER been so low in all our History, the ozone layer is peeling back like an onion, bushfires are ravaging Australia in one of the driest Springs ever, and the Global weather has approached levels of unpredictability NEVER before seen. Every single scientist and meteorologist who isn't in the pocket of the interest groups is adamant that we are approaching a crisis point. The devil is in the details, some disagree that the effects are as bad as have been predicted (these people usually own houses well away from the sea, not on fault-lines, away from volcanic geothermal bores and have a well-stocked larder...) and others argue that we must act NOW, regardless of the loss of profit for a tiny minority of fat rich meglomaniacs, who plan on being dead and gone after living in obscene luxury long before the swelling oceans engulf their filth-belching factories (hey, and they are not JUST Americans, for you guys who think that this is just another "anti-US" rant by Le Kiwi... )
It's a huge subject, but it won't wait around for the few idiots who still refuse to face reality. They need to think REALLY hard about their kids futures, and the future of every living thing on the surface of the Planet. Real fast.
well i flat out disagree with this global warming crap.
the earth is doing what its always been doing for millions of years
ppl reckon the sea levels are going to rise 7 meters pppfft as if .
comon sense will tell you there isnt enough land based ice to cover that sort of depth when it melts over the entire earth
like what happens if you fill a glass with ice the top it up with water?
what happens when it melts?
does it overflow? NO
so if all the sea ice melts nothing will change only land based ice will alter the levels
im a kiwi that lives in austrailia and there been no bush fires last summer
and the ones we had the summer befor that were lit by feckin nut bag fire fighters that needed a hero fix ....yes that is true .
most of the fires lit by ppl here in sydney were done by fire fighters.
arson aside ...if you do your homework abit you would know that alot of the native plants here need to be burnt to throw their seeds.
like i said the earth is doing what it does and the only thing that has changed is it is starting to affect us and the goverments have found out they can make a buck off it
no use blaming the cows, we all fart and always have done
my mother in laws a feckin greenie, thats why she lives in new zealand and we dont and she thinks getting on a plane to come over to visit is not green because planes burn kero and that way of thinkin suits me damm fine
any way i could go on for hours about this but i now feel a need to go and burn some fossil fuel so the fiddy ones gettting takin out for a thashin why? because i can
muzz
well i flat out disagree with this global warming crap.
the earth is doing what its always been doing for millions of years
ppl reckon the sea levels are going to rise 7 meters pppfft as if .
comon sense will tell you there isnt enough land based ice to cover that sort of depth when it melts over the entire earth
like what happens if you fill a glass with ice the top it up with water?
what happens when it melts?
does it overflow? NO
so if all the sea ice melts nothing will change only land based ice will alter the levels
im a kiwi that lives in austrailia and there been no bush fires last summer
and the ones we had the summer befor that were lit by feckin nut bag fire fighters that needed a hero fix ....yes that is true .
most of the fires lit by ppl here in sydney were done by fire fighters.
arson aside ...if you do your homework abit you would know that alot of the native plants here need to be burnt to throw their seeds.
like i said the earth is doing what it does and the only thing that has changed is it is starting to affect us and the goverments have found out they can make a buck off it
no use blaming the cows, we all fart and always have done
my mother in laws a feckin greenie, thats why she lives in new zealand and we dont and she thinks getting on a plane to come over to visit is not green because planes burn kero and that way of thinkin suits me damm fine
any way i could go on for hours about this but i now feel a need to go and burn some fossil fuel so the fiddy ones gettting takin out for a thashin why? because i can
muzz
You sound like a 10 year old. Sorry, but you do. If you dont think our worldwide, industril, civil, commercial, private, collective emissions are harmful then you can prove it with this little experiment. Go outside, close to a highway, sit in a chair for 1 hour and smell the fossil fuels being burned.
Make mental notes...
Go home, close your garage door, start your car, have a seat and breathe the fumes for an hour.
Let us know if that has any effect on you sophomoric outlook on global warming...
There are many sources for this increase in greenhouse gases. Some are our fault, some occur naturally. No doubt our burning of fossil fuels for transportation and energy contribute, but by how much is the information up to this point I haven't seen.
With respect to carbon dioxide, how much is released when an acre of forest burns? How about by all the volcanoes throughout a year? How about the effect of increased solar radiation warming the ocean by the tiniest amount which causes the releases of billions of tons of dissolved CO2? These are all things that would have occured whether people were here or not.
Since this thread was closed months ago I have additional information to at least one of the earlier questions I posed. One question I asked was why warming was bad for the Atlantic currents, my thought at the time was the difference in temperature between tropical and arctic was what drives it. Whether they are 80/29F or 85/34F shouldn't really matter that much, at least to this layman.
In the meantime what I learned was that besides the temperature, the salinity of the water (and its corresponding specific gravity) was also crucial, and this variance is what primarily drives the current. We had our last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago. Before this the Earth was warming and melting glaciers over Canada. A huge lake (bigger than all Great Lakes combined) was over much of Canada and northern US, held in by the ice to the east. As the glaciers receded, it reached a point where the lake suddenly emptied into the north Atlantic. This fresh water immediately and dramatically altered the salinity of the water and disrupted the current. The northern latitudes suddenly were not warmed by this current and experienced the "real" temperatures they should have had w/o the current. The Ice Age ensued until the Earth slowly but surely reached back to equilibrium about to what we are used to now.
So in reality my original question remains how a temperature difference alone will disrupt the "conveyor belt of life" or whatever it is called. There are no lakes to drain, the melting of the ice caps will certainly be unfortunate for many species (walrus, seals, and polar bears), but this influx of fresh water will be more gradual.
Environmentalism is a love of and a respect for the earth, and an expression of our understanding that the earth's health is our health.
BUT, your conclusion that "environmentalism is a smokescreen for capitalism" is spot on even if you didn't mean it this way. It is one of several issues that are mentioned any time conservatives feel boxed in. They pull the rabbit out of the hat (environmentalists...or socialists...or liberals...or code pink...or flip-flop...or "he'll raise your taxes", etc.) in order to degenerate anything progressive. Conservatives just want their own world to stay the same...in their comfort zone. Improvement is frowned upon because it increases costs and is just a big headache for them. They are the ultimate KISS advocates. And smokescreens give them room to wiggle out from under the burden of holding us back. Deep down inside they know they are dead weight around America's neck and having something to rally around, like evil environmentalism, comforts them. If they weren't seeing the world through so much smoke then they might realise that Darwin is working on them.
Only a moron would deny the cumulative effects of the industrial world's exhaust. Try to imagine the same wing ding, over simplified, over confidant and ill informed group of people running(ruining) the economy. You dont have to imagine!!!!! What did they say? Everything is OK, we dont need oversight, people will do the right thing if left alone, deregulate, government must get out of the way blah blah. Now it's quite the opposite. Gee, could you be entertaining the same falsities in your juvenile programming regarding the Earth? I think so, but you guys scream anything but. If you could "reason" that it's possible you are fundamentally WRONG, you may save idiotic failures like Iraq(thx Cheney/Dumbsfeld), S&L(thx McCain), Katrina(txh George) etc. Personal responsibility is just that... take it, for your shit, your piss, your garbage, your food choices, your purchases, your vote, your travels and your associations. Take it or STFU. Stop talking crap. Disgusting. Bitching about taxes but cheer leading the trillion dollar "War to nowhere".
Right wingers can't simply take a lesson from current failures or failures of the past, let alone, other people's mistakes. Instead of admitting that you voted criminals into your highest office, you just deny that they're stealing and cheating, oh you may have to vote outside of the paint by numbers, rigid, inflexible lines of thought that were imprinted onto you at such a tender age that you seem unable to shake it! . Turn on Rush and pump up to the vibes of cowardice, hypocrisy and failure. All these thieves and cockroaches running your show...Great way to run a business guys. Instead of being alarmed about pollutants from all directions you look around you for people to mock. Instead of re-evaluating your positions regarding facts, you network to shore up the "chum" factor and relive the nagging logic with ridicule and absurdities of the science and logic surrounding you.
Show a right wing ding-a-ling the pollution, floating on the ocean and he/she will say, the waves have always risen and fallen. There are more polar bears now than ever before, well at least since the earth was made by Jesus's father 4000 years ago...
A real man doesnt do things to jeopardize the future of his clan, seed, heritage or destiny. You fools want to mock it or call the economy a priority over the environment. The environment was here long before the economy... about 5 billion years before. Whether the atmosphere remains hospitable for us is going to depend on whether we make sensible use of what is around us and refrain from nuking bogeymen, dumping chemicals, deregulating industry etc.
Yes, I dare say, you guys act like the Bart Simpsons of the world when you spew your tripe regarding the facts and figures. Even when your concepts collapse or dont stand the scrutiny of logic or common sense, you simply make up fairy tales like Religion or Bogeymen, Marxism...it's time to grow up. No more stupid concepts like intelligent design, whales standing upright in the earth, original sin, Noah's stupid childish arc and all the other tripe you try to pass of as a counter to truth, reality and fact.
The new religion is; perfecting democracy, getting to know the Earth, how it works, who we share it with, how we preserve it, fair trade, science etc. Not selfish, imbecilic ding-a-ling behavior and fairy tales...
I am glad you like green. I am not surprised that you see there's money to be made. I am not surprised that you guys are the last to admit it. I am not surprised that it's all about the money for you guys. What surprises me is that you think you are the center of the universe and your fairy tales are approved by God. ...still!
By Bob Myer
By Noel Sheppard
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Green means GREEEEN!!
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