[Vision2020] Inconvenient Truth: What you gonna do?

Tue Aug 22 17:37:46 PDT 2006

Thanks for a thoughtful long post. I learned more from this.

It is a problem with staggering scale and implications. The implications, if
the Greenland ice sheet does collapse and both raise sea level and, by
dumping fresh water into the North Atlantic, simultaneously alter the
climate in northern Europe would be a huge economic catastrophe.

I agree with your questions about the CO2 costs of a Prius vs the costs of
maintaining a less efficient vehicle. And if there is a big change coming,
perhaps we should do something more fundamental that change the vehicle we
drive ‹ like making our little city more dense to reduce driving all
together.

Going to the new cities gig tonight?

On 8/22/06 12:25 PM, "Ted Moffett" <starbliss at gmail.com> wrote:

> Nils et. al.
>  
> The answer is simple, ha, ha, ha:  the human race must reduce in absolute
> amounts how much CO2 we dump into the atmosphere... It seems nearly inevitable
> that this will not occur for the foreseeable future, however.
>  
> Of course driving as little as possible helps, or driving a more fuel
> efficient alternatively powered car or truck.  The plug in hybrids allow the
> advantages of a gas engine combined with charging the batteries by solar or
> wind.  These vehicles may be available widely soon.  Development planning and
> transportation systems need to be adjusted to encourage less driving, not
> more, as you implied in your comment about the bypass.  Raising the CAFE
> standards is a no brainer, that as far as I know is currently dead on Capitol
> Hill (unless recent legislation has addressed this), given current
> "leadership." 
>  
> There are many small steps that can be taken locally to reduce CO2 emissions,
> or increase CO2 sequestration:  gardens on Moscow city rooftops downtown?
> Sounds silly, I suppose, but every little change adds up.  I posted info to
> Vision2020 on the US Conference of Mayors Climate Change Initiative that
> offers steps for cities to take to locally address climate change.  My post
> sunk on Visioin2020 like a stone...
>  
> I have been debating the fossil fuel CO2 emission equation, and solutions,
> with a friend who teaches environmental science, and we speculated:  How much
> fossil fuel sourced CO2 emissions are released to build a new fuel efficient
> car?  Quite a lot, I assume.  We had trouble finding reliable data.  But
> driving an older less fuel efficient car (depending on the gap between the MPG
> of the older car and newer hybrid, let us say) for limited use might be a more
> CO2 efficient solution than buying that new hybrid and supporting all the CO2
> emissions that went into resource extraction, manufacturing, and transporting
> the new car to the dealership (from Japan?).
>  
> It's so easy to overlook how fossil fuels are connected to nearly every aspect
> of economic activity, and not count the "hidden" fossil fuel costs of
> solutions to fossil fuel CO2 emissions.  Like someone charging their electric
> car off a coal fired electric plant...absurd!
>  
> I read one analysis of nuclear fission plants and the fossil fuel penalty for
> their operation, uranium mining, constructing the plants, and mothballing them
> which they inevitably must be, and the efficiency in regards to CO2
> emissions/energy output was about par with a natural gas fired electric plant.
> So the idea nuclear fission plants are so CO2 clean is not as sometimes
> claimed. 
>  
> There are two basic directions that can be taken to solve the problem.  One,
> modern industrial global civilization could downsize energy consumption by
> orders of magnitude.  Or two, develop new practical widely applied CO2 neutral
> energy sources.  
>  
> We could discuss massive CO2 sequestration as a solution, but given existing
> technology, this is only a partial solution.
>  
> The first option is a fairy tale scenario.  It would demand a massive
> downsizing of growth and economic development on a global scale.  The Earth
> Sciences Institute at Columbia University projects that before the end of this
> century, China and India will have far exceeded the USA in fossil fuel
> burning.  By then US energy hogs will be feeling the heat, both from climate
> change and the costs of oil.  Anyone who says we can use energy conservation,
> given current global energy demands and the reality of the marketplace, to
> reduce the absolute amounts of CO2 the human race is dumping into the
> atmosphere, without new practical widely applied break through energy
> technologies, has not done the math.  Optimists are only hoping we can slow
> the growth of the absolute amount of CO2 emissions.
>  
> The second solution seems the only real hope to solve the problem.  Many
> scientists think current efforts to introduce biofuels, fuel cells, solar,
> wind and other "green" options will not provide sufficient CO2 reductions to
> lower the absolute amounts of CO2 the human race emits, given economic
> realities and energy demands, and are only helpful but partial solutions.
>  
> A massive "Apollo Project" sized effort to develop practical nuclear fusion
> and CO2 sequestration, and other solutions, is promoted by some.  Fusion power
> could be the energy break through of human history, though its practicality is
> still in doubt.  And this option, and the rapid development of other practical
> energy options, is not something that local governments can tackle.  We need
> the President of the US to advocate hundreds of billions of dollars investment
> in creating CO2 neutral energy and CO2 sequestration technology, including
> fusion.  And if the US can't lead the way for the rapid development of new
> energy technologies, given we are the most wealthy nation on Earth...
>  
> I saw Gore's film "Inconvenient Truth" when it first hit the Palouse in
> Pullman.  I biked over to see it, of course.  The film was dumbed down, and
> did not attempt to present a full picture of the main variables in climate
> change science, a very complex subject.  But if it helps change people's
> behavior... Will it?
>  
> One daunting problem is that very few people really take the threat of global
> warming seriously, even those who admit it is happening.  Some say it is not
> due to human causes to any significant degree, or even if so, we will adapt to
> the changes.  That the human race must reduce CO2 emissions in absolute
> amounts or catastrophic climate change will occur is too abstract or remote a
> problem to seem real to many people.
>  
> Who seriously contemplates that what comes out of the average US car or light
> truck tail pipe during one year of driving is about 5 tons of CO2 dumped into
> the atmosphere? You can't dump five tons of CO2 in someones yard to show them
> what they are doing.  Well, maybe in compressed tanks... one option being
> considered for CO2 sequestration at coal fired plants:  remove the CO2 and
> store it in tanks... or inject it into the ground, not the atmosphere.
>  
> With the USA having the most coal of any nation on earth, an energy source
> that the USA can rely on long after oil markets have pushed oil over $100 a
> barrel (only a question of when not if), practical CO2 sequestration
> technology for coal fired plants would be a major break through.
>  
> Modern civilisation is so integrated into the use of fossil fuels at all
> levels that to question the wisdom of fossil fueled transportation and energy,
> the inevitability of fossil fuel extraction and burning with no end in sight,
> and the primacy of global market driven capitalism and consumerism as a system
> that must continue despite global warming, are questions even those who are
> fully aware of the massive problems human induced catastrophic climate change
> will create, don't want to face honestly, on all levels.  It might mean giving
> up aspects of our lifestyle that most do not want to sacrifice.
>  
> Even Al Gore's lifestyle, the hypocrite!  Of course this describes my behavior
> as well...
>  
> As it has been put, modern globalized muti-national corporate capitalism is a
> wholly owned subsidiary of Mother Earth... I can hear the free market
> capitalism as religion devotees screaming at that one...
>  
> There has been a deliberate effort to mock and delegitimize the science that
> indicates global warming is a serious threat, work by numerous climate change
> scientists that now reveal the overwhelming consensus that human caused global
> warming is occurring at a rapid rate.
>  
> I saw Eugene Linden, author of "Winds of Change," giving a talk and question
> and answer session on C-Span this past weekend.  He noted that the best
> selling book on the subject of global warming called it a hoax aimed at
> filling the coffers of environmental scientists with grant money.  He also
> said that global warming may be the most critical problem with overwhelming
> scientific evidence to take action ever to be so ignored by the public and
> government.  Linden really knew his stuff, and was aware of the thinking of
> the major human caused global warming skeptics (though there are only a few
> with credibility), ready to answer their arguments:
>  
> http://www.eugenelinden.com/
>  
> -----------
> Ted Moffett
> 
>  
> On 8/22/06, Nils Peterson <nils_peterson at wsu.edu
> <mailto:nils_peterson at wsu.edu> > wrote:
>> So did you see Al Gore's movie? My sister, the infamous 'Rock Doc' of the
>> DNews went, prepared to debunk Gore's latest invention since the Internet.
>> She came away saying the science was solid, but not saying she had any
>> actions in mind.
>> 
>> My immediate thoughts are along the lines of conservation rather than
>> running out to by a Prius.
>> 
>> Which folds into another thought that has passed through v2020. I posted a
>> response to talk about making an 'internal bypass' of Hwy 8 along the old RR
>> route between downtown and UI. Aaron Ament later told me he'd biked the
>> route to look closer.
>> 
>> If we were to heed Gore and cut car trips down we wouldn't need the bypass.
>> Just a thought
>> 
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> 

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