‘It may be time to get serious about trying to slow this catastrophic trend’

August 3, 2006

The first six months of 2006 were the hottest ever recorded in the United States. The National Climatic Data Center reports that more than 50 American cities have set [tag]record highs[/tag] this summer.

It’s prompted the New York Times’ [tag]Bob Herbert[/tag] to ask, “[tag]Hot[/tag] enough yet?”

The heat wave burned its way east from California, where it killed more than 100 people. It moved relentlessly across the nation’s midsection, sparking record-high temperatures in state after state, mimicking a heat wave that killed more than 700 people in the Midwest in 1995.

For the past couple of days it has tormented the East Coast, draining power systems and creating a hellish environment for the frail and infirm, and especially for the elderly poor struggling to survive without the blessings of air-conditioning.

You can’t blame any single weather event on [tag]global warming[/tag]. But with polar bears drowning because they can’t swim far enough to make it from one ice floe to another; with the once-glorious snows of Kilimanjaro about to bring down the final curtain on their long, long run; with the virtual disappearance of Lake Chad in Africa, which was once the size of Lake Erie, it may be time to get serious about trying to slow this catastrophic trend.

Indeed, it’s past time to get serious about this. That is, unless you’re in the House Republican leadership.

Yesterday, House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said yesterday that Congress will do nothing about [tag]climate change[/tag] in 2007 and 2008 if Republicans keep their majorities.

[Blunt] said he would oppose global warming mandates if Republicans control the 110th Congress. “I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful,” he said.

As Judd noted, “thousands of scientists have agreed that global warming is real, humans are responsible for much of it and, unless steps are taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there will be extremely serious consequences.”

In other words, for Blunt and his GOP colleagues like James Inhofe and Conrad Burns, the answer to Herbert’s question — “Hot enough yet?” — is “no.”

Yeah, but think how much us taxpayers here in Omaha will save when the city doesn’t have to waste all that money on snowplows, sand, and salt.

And no more school days missed because of snow.

In fact, to increase the level of greenhouse gases, I’m taking the catalytic converter off both of our vehicles. Heck, I’m trading in the Nissan for a Hummer. Oh, hell, a KENWORTH!!

  • Good. I want this statement included in EVERY Republican’s talking points for the November elections. I want every candidate standing up and saying “Elect me as part of a Republican majority and we promise to oppose global warming mandidates for the next two years.” If they would add “we will continute to push for no gay marriage, lower taxes for the rich, no accountability for business or the Executive branch, ultra-conservative judges, pre-emptive war, removal of the seperaton between church and state, and huge deficit spending.”

    What a jackass.

  • There was an excellent piece in this month’s National Geographic about how we need to combat global warming (I couldn’t find it online — sorry, no link).

    The notion was that traditional methods won’t work. Instead of focusing on it on an issue by issue basis (like clean water or saving the spotted owl) it will have to be a societal and cultural shift. The problem is just entirely too massive to do otherwise.

    The issue, of course, is that so many on the right don’t want this societal shift to happen. So, we’re going to have to do it at the grassroots level by changing the way we ALL live.

    Shop at farmer’s markets — doing so reduces the fossil fuels needed to get produce to stores. Move closer to work (or work from home). Install solar power at your house. Turn your AC up a few degrees. Buy a rain barrel to water your yard (or do what we do and just don’t bother watering at all — hey, you don’t have to mow as often!).

    Basically, the government will NOT step in and solve the problem. At least not this government. It will take ALL of us, doing what we can, even if just a little bit, to make a difference.

    Damn … sorry for the dissertation. Sometimes I just get going …

  • Very true. And let’s not forget that the added heat will likely kill off thousands of elderly, disabled and obese (in light of today’s AP story). This will definitely help resolve the Social Security funding problem.

  • These guys live in a world where engines don’t produce heat or CO2, where poor people can pull up their bootstraps (if they have them), where true peace is obtained thru terror and intimidation, where the scribblings of some ignorant shepards some 2000 years ago hold more knowledge about the universe than educated scientists who spend their lives studying it and where oil/gas/elec utilities tell the truth and don’t screw their fellow man over for a few extra schekels.

    By the time these bozos realize that the oil lobbyist’s hand up their ass was lying to them, it will be too late.

  • CNN is reporting on a lake in New Jersey where the heat actually boiled the fish. The BBC has a report about beaches in Italy that are closed because the unusually warm Mediterranian Sea is creating blooms of algae that release toxic chemicals. That is just today.

    Here is a possible in to get the Republicans on the bandwagon – Pregnant woman dies ar Red Sox game – Baby survives (also CNN.com). They don’t care if 184 adults care in California but now that the heat is endangering the unborn I expect a ruckus of support for anti-global warming legislation.

  • I know that the heat wave has been really bad in this country.

    However, even if global warming has increased the average temp by 2 degrees, which is probably an extremely high estimate, then the difference between 103 and 101 would be due to global warming. This disgusting heat wave would still be a disgusting heat wave.

    I am not concerned about the effects that global warming has had so far. Why? Because so far, they haven’t been too terrible.

    The scary part is what the world might look like in 20 years.

    What would happen to Europe if the Gulf Stream shuts down? It appears to be 15% to 30% weaker than it was in 1990. It is likely that one of the first major disasters caused by global warming is Europe freezing.

    Most of the US could survive fairly easily. Large parts of the rest of the world will suffer far sooner than the US will.

    ###################
    What I really don’t understand is why the people who are concerned about global warming are not pushing as hard as they can for nuclear power.

    Do you agree that nuclear power is one of the best ways to produce eneregy without creating greenhouse gases???

  • You know, this “head in the sand” approach by the Republicant’s is even more nonsensical than it appears at first blush.

    When John Kennedy said in 1961 that we should send a man to the moon “in this decade,” there was nothing approaching the technology to do this – it was all created in those 8 years between that statement and the landing of Apollo-11. And the fallout from that technological development still creates changes today. The computer I am using right now is a direct outgrowth of the original miniaturization technology created for Apollo (it still blows my mind that they landed on the moon with a computer that had a 34 kilobyte “memory” that had to be programmed with punch cards), just as a “for instance.”

    Does anyone think that a decision to develop the technology necessary to actually have an effect on global warming in the next ten years would not have a similar fall-out on technological development overall? And I think it’s very likely that “old-fashioned American know-how” might have a pretty big input to that, once loosed on the problem. What better way to regain the technological edge??? Industry could literally be rebuilt, and old-fashioned entrepreneuralism (which the Republican’ts are always touting) would transform things in ways we can’t even picture. It would be the “third wave” of the Industrial Revolution.

    One would think, if one was stupid enough to believe Republican’t propaganda, that this would be a “natural” for them, to demonstrate the power of the “private sector,” etc., etc. (never mind that the private sector has never accomplished squat without the government “priming the pump”, be it the tariffs of the 19th century that allowed the creation of domestic manufacturing, the giveaway of public lands that led to the development of transcontinental railroads, the post office contracts that led to the development of commercial aviation, or the space program that led to the development of modern technology).

    Just thinkin’ here – I know, I know, that’s highly subversive activity here in BushLand. But “I think the information is not adequate yet for us to do anything meaningful” is just mind-bogglingly ignorant. (Wait – “mind-bogglingly ignorant” is a synonym for “movement conservative,” right?)

  • They GOP will probly just (mis)use the info as more proof of the end of days.
    They want the apocolypse.
    Dan hit the button on its ugly head. They believe, they do not know. They refuse to know. Americans are just too damn arrogant to stop their consumption habits. If 50% don’t even bother to vote, does any of us have a hope?

  • Good point, Tom. but….
    technology development is a consuming, dirty business. Remember the laws of thermodynamics, no energy conversion is 100% efficient. The amount of pollution and resources required to get there may push us over the edge.
    Happy Happy, Joy Joy!

  • Do you agree that nuclear power is one of the best ways to produce eneregy without creating greenhouse gases???

    Yes, I agree. Of course, I also agree that it’s the best way to create thousands of tons of radioactive waste that we have no good way to dispose of.

    Nuclear is not the answer — newer technologies (hyrdrogen-based power plants? Better, more efficient solar power? etc.) are.

  • Nuclear power. Here we go again, the blind leading the ignorant.

    Hey Neil, as someone who not only studied this issue but wrote a Master’s Thesis on it, let me tell you something: when you figure out where to put the garbage safely – when “the garbage” is plutonium, the most poisonous thing known in nature – and can insure that it will be left alone for SIX TIMES LONGER THAN ALL OF RECORDED HUMAN HISTORY – and that just deals with the half-life, which still leaves it the most-poisonous thing known – that’s left alone not only by geological changes, since you’re operating on geological time now, but left alone by humans of generations to come for longer than Homo Sapiens has existed on the planet before the stuff is ‘safe”, humans who have an amazing ability (as shown repeatedly in “recorded human history”) to almost always do The Wrong Thing, then I will be happy to jump on your little nuclear power bandwagon and cheer you on.

    Nuclear power is the one thing that is guaranteed to make things worse than they are. It requires a 100% perfect, trouble-free operation (since the results of a mistake are spelled “C-A-T-A-S-T-R-O-P-H-E” – have you read recently of what’s still wrong with the Ukraine 20 years after Chernobyl????). When was the last time you ever saw anything invented and operated by humans that had 100% perfect, trouble-free operation???

    Take the time to do a little research, Neil, before exposing yourself as a Publick Moron.

  • Unholy Moses,

    I’m not expert on the matter, but from what I’ve read, Hydrogen is really more of an energy storage and tranportation system, not an energy generation system. More like a battery and less like a generator.

    As I understand it, the issue is that there isn’t a huge amount of hydrogen gas in our atmosphere. The main source of hydrogen is splitting water molecules into their component Hydrogen and Oxygen components. The energy required to break apart those molecules is a bit more than the energy you’ll get when you use the hydrogen to generate power. So what you need is a cost effective and clean method of generating large amounts of power so you can create large amounts of hydrogen. Then the hydrogen can be stored, transported, and tapped for power as needed.

  • There’s an undertone of unreality in the “conservation” movement, a form of Puritanism and a variant on the doctrines of Savonarola. We often express the wish that people would act differently than they always do, that we can somehow change human nature, which we can’t.

    The first task of an engineer (or theoretical counterpart, the physicist) is to recognize the essential nature of what you’re dealing with. If water runs downhill, it won’t do any good to pray that it behaved otherwise. You should turn your attention, rather, to methods of storing water atop the hill or developing a pump to get it up the hill. People don’t want to spend their waking hours making sure every possible kilowatt can be saved. Some people still like to go for a drive in the country. Like the engineers and physicists, we should start with some elementary “givens”, seeing those as “constraints” within which we have to operate or at least to work around.

    If conservationists had prevented the English from felling nearly all the forests of England in order to obtain wood essential for constructing their ships, the manufacture of industrially more efficient coke would never have been cost-efficient. The Industrial Revolution would never have happened there. The forests would still be standing, and England would’ve stepped out of history by the time of the Napoleonic wars.

    The trouble with the current argument about global warming is that — like so much in uninformed America — it’s “all or nothing”. No real-world problem is like that; variables don’t go on changing without compensating adjustments to keep them from going to infinity. That’s the essence of the ecological viewpoint, as opposed to the conservationist one. Global warming is a real-world engineering problem, to be solved rather than ideologically debated. It’s time our leaders realized that.

  • “House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said yesterday that Congress will do nothing about climate change in 2007 and 2008 if Republicans keep their majorities.”

    After “stay the course in Iraq” this is the best possible news for Democrats.

    Republicans still don’t realize that global warming is the only issue that really matters from here on out. It really does change everything.

    So get this:
    Republicans are STILL in the denial phase.
    (Just like Iraq.)

    This will cost them many a future election.
    Including, I suspect, the 2008 presidential campaign.

    Only after they’ve sufferred that sort of defeat will they acknowledge the problem’s importance and THEN get on to their next phase: The blocking of potential solutions.

    What I am saying here is both clear and coldly analytical:

    The Republican party will do everything it can to first deny global warming and then to prevent its multivarious solutions.

    Which is all to say (in the manner of Pogo) : We have found the enemy and they are the Republicans amongst us.

    I written variations of this post on other threads.
    And every time I rewrite it… I realize I am really nailing the truth the way no one else has nailed it:

    The truth about our future.
    And the truth about Republicans.

    Until you realize that the above exposes EXACTLY how the majority of Republicans will behave for the next 5-10 years, you have no idea just how detrimental these spoiled children are to the future of humanity.

    For not only must humanity somehow find ways to defeat global warming, but humanity must also battle those who will subvert solutions.

    This is an awesome task.

    Is humanity up to this?

    Can the better part of humanity BOTH defeat global warming AND drag their evil stepchildren (Republicans) into a better future?

    It all remains to be seen.

    If so… it really will be the Chrysalis moment we’ve all been waiting for…

  • One thing EVERYBODY should do is convert as many fixtures as possible from incandescent to compact fluorescent bulbs. Not only does this save electricity, it also saves you money. Each bulb you convert will save you between $30 and $50 over the life of the bulb. Plus the cooler bulbs are less load on your AC.

    My local home supply sells these bulbs for $10 for either a pack of four 100-watt equivalents or six 60-watt equivalents. Each one lasts 10 to 13 times as long as an incandescent, and uses a quarter of the juice. If the price of electricity goes up, they’re an even better bargain.

  • Re: Nuclear Power

    Isn’t it amazing that the right wing of the Republican Party has convinced ignorant people like me that nuclear power is a good way to produce electricity without creating CO2.

    Oh wait, I forgot that France and Japan get a huge portion of their electricity from nuclear power. It is amazing that the Republicans can convince France to kill themselves using nuclear power, ain’t it?

    Now, let’s live in a dream world where every civilian nuclear reactor in the world is shut down. OK, now what are we going to do with all the nuclear waste created by the military in the US, China, Russia, Israel, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and England?

    You know, I never thought of it. Nuclear waste created to reduce CO2 is a bad thing but we don’t have to worry about nuclear waste from the military because we know that the military decisions are always correct.

  • Danny-
    To be honest, I just yanked the Hydrogen thing out of my a$$ — thus the “?” at the end. 🙂 But your post is exactly what I’ve posted about on my site before:

    The energy issue, global warming, etc., are all part of a lack of innovation. We’re relying on century-old technology for transportation, rather than truly coming up with something new. Your post looks for something new … something forward thinking. And while I sure as hell have no answer for how to efficiently use H for energy (there’s a reason I have two English degrees), and not sure what your line of work is, it’d be nice if someone did more research and found the solution. It doesn’t have to be Hydrogen, or even solar or wind. Just SOMETHING.

    Ed–
    That was one of the best comments I’ve ever read on any blog. And it makes a good point — still maintaining what we do, but making a slight enough correction to make a difference. Too bad some folks aren’t willing to make ANY change. It truly is mind blowing.

    neil–
    Sorry for pointing out that nuclear power, while not releasing C02, has some rather large — and potentially more deadly — side effects. Sheesh …

  • Oh, no, no, no. Global warming is a myth, just like evolution, gravity and the idea that the earth is flat. All lies, product of the liberal media.
    Stay the course!

  • Picture the world a half century from now, say 2060, if we continue our ways without drastic change. Population: ten billion. Developing nations providing a standard of living equivalent to what we enjoy now in America. It doesn’t work. And yet that’s where we’re going. That means catastrophe.

    Why doesn’t it work? Just do the numbers. Americans consume more than 20 million barrels a day of oil. At that rate, ten billion people will use 250 billion barrels a year. There’s estimated to be something on the order of one trillion barrels of recoverable oil left on earth. Double that. Triple it. It still doesn’t work. We have to get off oil one way or another.

    Now throw in all the pollution that kind of consumption will produce. Eight times as much as today. What kind of horrible environment will that be? Where will the food come from? We can’t feed 6.5 billion today.

    Now throw global warming on top of all this.

    It’s an apocalyptic train wreck coming within a half century if we don’t get off our asses and do something. Global warming is only one component of the disaster we’re headed toward.

  • The tragic irony here is that groups such as the E.L.F. (the Earth Liberation Front) are now considered terrorists, domestic enemy number one by the Federal Government, FBI, etc. Whilst a-holes such as, oh, I don’t know, the great majority of the Repiglican party actively contribute, actually seem to revel in the literal destruction of our environment…and get paid pretty well to do so.

    I’m sorry – but I’m not so sure talking about this issue is going to cut it – we need some drastic action, and now!

  • Everyone’s assuming there’s a solution that can be found. Some problems aren’t solvable, or aren’t solvable given the time and resources at hand.

    What if there is no workable solution? What if, fundamentally, our technological economy and lifestyle are unsustainable under any technology we can discover soon enough to deploy?

    What do you think the collapse would look like?

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