Comments on: What Can a New President do from Day One on Global Warming?

By: Jay Foreman

Jay Foreman — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 07:21:13 +0000

All these examples and explinations, they’re way to idealistic. I’d like to ask you all to take a step back and look at the physical and practical implications of all these “ideas”. You want the president to completely change America, taking it off fossil fuels and going the extra mile to clean the atmosphere. Our government would never allow this. Even if you found a president that completely supported the green movement, he’d have to deal with a congress of old encumbants who wont be so quick to change. Our system was designed to keep America from falling victim to radical ideas like the ones you’re preaching here. Its all about using conflict to achieve balance, when the hippies (thats you guys) argue with the practical consevatives (thats me) a compromise is reached and a solution is found. But if America were to get off of fossil fuels, we’d have to be weened off it, slowely and deliberately. Their wont be a “sweeping revolution.”

By: Bob B

Bob B — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 23:09:00 +0000

I'm a proud "troll" and a proud skeptic of C02 caused AGW. I believe that the AGW crowd is over looking environmental factors because they want to feel good about themselves and they think they can change the world by using a different light bulb. It is quite possible that the huge amount of carbon soot, Nitrous Oxide (296 X the warming potential of C02), and deforestation in China is a much larger problem than C02 from my Escalade. Soot from Asia may contribute up to 1/3 of the air pollution in California, and black soot from Asia has made it to glaciers in the Arctic and Greenland. According to Dr. Lindzen, of MIT, in studies C02 has a rapid rate of diminishing returns, a doubling in the atmosphere may result in a 1 degree c increase in temperature. Another 1 degree c will need an increase of 4X. [Editor's Note: There is a devastating expose of Dr. Lindzen's errors, underwriting from the oil and gas industry, and simply funny flip-flops here. My favorite: "Richard Lindzen will indeed accept a bet (that he is right) - but only if offered odds of 50:1 in his favour!"]

By: jennybedellstiles

jennybedellstiles — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:09:07 +0000

Thanks Richard, it’s important for us to realize what the executive position is capable of. Now is the right time for us to educate ourselves and decide what we want to encourage the next President to achieve. Now is also the right time to ask ourselves — What are we willing to do to make sure the next President fights and negotiates for what we want?

Seriously, if we all think about our strengths, and what we are willing to do, this movement will explode and be unstoppable.

By: Richard Graves

Richard Graves — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:45:14 +0000

Normally I don’t respond to trolls, but I just want to make one point very clear. China needs our help to decarbonize and they know it and they want it. They need to start manufacturing energy efficient technology for our market and their domestic market. We need to invest in the industry to export to China more than decommissioned coal plants. In Bali, the Chinese government – which has banned this site for overly frank discussions of their pollution/political problems – came with constructive proposals. The USA did block them, because ideologically they want to block action on global warming. Oh, and I agree with this statement by you “AGW is the new communism, yes the socialism that Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini wanted.” – exactly, that is why the left and right have to join together to fight it, build a strong bright green economy, and face Global Warming with the same determination we did Fascism and militarism with an Apollo project on the scale of the Manhattan project.

Evan P., thanks for the link and give me call to get the book.

Evan W., those are all really good points, I think in absolute volume transportation is huge, which is why it is so focused on it. Most fertilizer is natural gas, etc. But as I have said before, oil is too valuable to burn.

By: Evan Webb

Evan Webb — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:06:03 +0000

i looked through the table of contents of “freedom from oil” and it only looked to address fuel issues (for cars?). but what about plastics, asphalt, aviation, agriculture, trains, int’l trade, military equipment (can the military really go carbon neutral? and is this desirable?)? these don’t seem to be addressed even though these are all reliant upon oil… what am i missing?

By: Evan Paul

Evan Paul — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:22:58 +0000

Oh, and I’d love a copy of the David Sandalow book.

By: Evan Paul

Evan Paul — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:22:24 +0000

Hey Richard,

The one initiative that I know that’s looking at this question on climate is the Presidential Climate Action Partnership (http://www.climateactionproject.com/). They’re pulling together a significant collection (i.e. 200+) actionable policies by the next administration on climate as well as the background policy analysis, budget requirements, etc. necessary to implement them.

Evan

By: Brad Arnold

Brad Arnold — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:38:17 +0000

It is very unlikely that mankind will cut emissions so fast and drastically that either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming will be avoided. Therefore, any feasible planetary rescue plan must include a method of removing excess CO2 from the air.

A new President has to call for a low cost, technically feasible, and highly scalable way be found to remove some of the CO2 from the air, lowing the elevated level in the air, because if it isn’t lowered soon, our climate will rapidly return to the hothouse of 55 million years ago when most life died.

I suggest biosequestration (aka global gardening). Perhaps seed a GMO into the ocean.

To summarize, a new President could put the US on a war footing to cut emissions, but it would probably be too little too late, and all those resources would have been expended wastefully. Instead, the new President ought to call for massive “Manhattan projects” to come up with an energy source cheaper than burning coal, and a method of removing CO2 from the air both inexpensively and rapidly.

If either of those two proposed projects were successful, we will have solved global warming and saved billions of people alive now plus countless future generations.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 04:11:04 +0000

What Can a New President do from Day One on Global Warming?” What a stupid question! Drive all the hybrids you want (I’m not against hybrids), use all the new age light bulbs you want (I’ve been using them for years), but you can do nothing to stop the pollution coming from China, India or the destruction of the rain forest in South America. C02 is very minor compared to other forms of pollution from burning (yes the burning of dirty coal in China and India and the forests). But that does not matter to you leftist who want taxes on everything and government control of everything. The black soot on the ice of the Arctic area from Asia causes much more ice melt than a very small increase in the global mean temperature (if you studied statistics you might know that a mean may mean nothing.) AGW is the new communism, yes the socialism that Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini wanted.