If climate change is real, is it a sin to do nothing about it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter lynnvinc
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Rice feeds over abillion people, and rice producers are facing increasing strains from gradual changes in the climate. Over the course of coming decades, foods that feed billions of people will continue to become more expensive, enough to make the effects of ethanol subsidies negligible.

Also, if you care so much about people in third world countries, try driving your car less, or supporting taxes on cars that consume excessive amounts of gas. Try wasting as little food and other resources as possible. These actions would be far more meaningful than ethanol subsidies.

Also note that that there is another side to your logic. If other alternative energy sources were developed more, ethanol subsidies wouldn’t be as needed. Also, if you want to blame environmentalists for high corn prices, do you blame fat people and cigarette smokers for high healthcare costs? How many people do you reckon their choices kill per year? And unlike alternative energy sources, they are not mitigate a serious problem that, if not handled, will surely kill many people in the future.
Except that this has already happened. It doesn’t just drive up prices locally, it drives up the prices of the commodity. The commodities market determines the price of these basic grains. Thus people are already starving because of the price of food has risen. And no, it isn’t negligible (food prices have almost doubled in a year because of these subsidies and a rise in oil price). When prices double for the very poor, it is very hard to pay for your food, thus starvation. And the amount of corn (and water I might add) that goes to these ethanol plants is not negligible. Even lynnvinc says she is against food for fuel schemes.

30% of US corn crop in 2007 reuters.com/article/2007/06/11/us-usa-ethanol-corn-idUSN1149215820070611

40% this 2011 article claims bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/u-s-corn-supply-shrinking-as-meat-ethanol-demand-send-crop-price-higher.html

And that is what they are, schemes. Along with cap and trade, and carbon credits. Just ways for governments and scheming individuals to make money off of a ‘crisis.’

It seems backwards to try to fix something (an unproven hypotheses) that might harm people in the future, with something that actually harms people now.
 
Except that this has already happened. It doesn’t just drive up prices locally, it drives up the prices of the commodity. The commodities market determines the price of these basic grains. Thus people are already starving because of the price of food has risen. And no, it isn’t negligible (food prices have almost doubled in a year because of these subsidies and a rise in oil price). When prices double for the very poor, it is very hard to pay for your food, thus starvation. And the amount of corn (and water I might add) that goes to these ethanol plants is not negligible. Even lynnvinc says she is against food for fuel schemes.

30% of US corn crop in 2007 reuters.com/article/2007/06/11/us-usa-ethanol-corn-idUSN1149215820070611

40% this 2011 article claims bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-08/u-s-corn-supply-shrinking-as-meat-ethanol-demand-send-crop-price-higher.html

And that is what they are, schemes. Along with cap and trade, and carbon credits. Just ways for governments and scheming individuals to make money off of a ‘crisis.’

It seems backwards to try to fix something (an unproven hypotheses) that might harm people in the future, with something that actually harms people now.
Not an unproven hypothesis, a validated scientific explanation for the ongoing increasing temperature of the earth.

Schemes or not, it’s not excuse to partake of action that we know is going to devastate people. It’s ironic, because people always complain about what the national debt will do to our children and grandchildren, and yet seem indifferent to what kind of earth we leave them. And you do realize the hypocrisy of your argument, don’t you? The fact that much much more money is made by fossil fuel companies than anyone could ever hope to gain through carbon credits. And that tha majority of anti-global warming “science” comes from institutions that recieve funds from that industry (such as the famous George Marshall Institute)?

cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/28/tech/main626471.shtml

(the scholarly article was titled “Rice Yields Decline with Higher Night Temperature from Global Warming” by Kenneth Cassman, et al. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch19.html (general negative effects)

Or on the effects of global warming on plankton, the main biotic producers of oxygen, see:

“Arctic Climate Change and Its Impacts on the Ecology of the North Atlantic” by Greene, et al., in Ecology, Vol. 89, No. 11.

Or,

“Antarctic Marine Primary Production, Biogeochemical Carbon Cycles and Climatic Change [and Discussion]” by Priddle, et al., in Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 338, No. 1285.

And there’s this:

ifpri.org/publication/climate-change-impact-agriculture-and-costs-adaptation

ictsd.org/downloads/2009/10/draft-ictsd-ipc-paper.pdf

royalsociety.org/General_WF.aspx?pageid=7317&terms=
(edit: this link doesn’t work for some reason; here’s a replacement:
climatechange.com.au/2005/04/26/impact-of-climate-change-on-crops-worse-than-previously-thought/)

And you didn’t answer my other points. What about other ways to develop alternative fuel sources? And about taxing overconsumptionof gasoline to reduce its price (and the price of ethanol? And why don’t you care about the people will starve and continue to starve from the rising environmental strain on food crops? Do you only care about those who starve for the sake of vindicating your political views?
 
Not an unproven hypothesis, a validated scientific explanation for the ongoing increasing temperature of the earth.
I am not concerned with “global warming” because there is nothing I can do to stop it, if it is indeed caused by humans. I am however concerned with polluting and ruining our local ecology. : I recycle and try to save both water and energy. I don’t see what that has to do with the price of bread. 🤷

The problem with carbon credits, is not that people can’t make as much money as oil companies, it is that, carbon credits are making money off of nothing (scam) and not reducing carbon emissions. All it really does, is tax people (although at this point voluntary) for their carbon emissions. If someone doesn’t use as much as some arbitrary person thinks is necessary, then they can sell their credits to someone who will use it. So no, there is no hypocrisy, it is a scam, and should be denounced as such. Did you know that Al Gore buys (or bought) carbon credits from his own carbon credit company? Sounds like a clever way to avoid tax liability. (BTW I noticed BP cleaned up the Gulf pretty well after their terrible spill, but I don’t see the wind power companies doing anything about all those birds and bats they are killing. Makes you think. This is not about the big bad fossil fuel companies.

I have never seen an article (not that there isn’t one) that has shown an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere and a .2 increase in world temps have caused crops to fail. I hear plenty about droughts or floods, or bad years, but so it has always been the world of farming. I can’t even definitively say rising CO2 levels are actually causing warming, much less that reducing CO2 levels is going to stop that rise in temperature and still be good for crops. 🤷 There are too many steps, too many links, between what makes world temp actually rise, what effects does that rise in temp actually have, and is it even man made. It is a hypothesis and has not been verified by any stretch of the imagination. The Models, and there is not just one, can’t predict the same thing. None predicted no rise in temps for the last few years, and give no confidence intervals for their predictions. 🤷 That doesn’t sound like “verifiable” to me.

I made a specific argument against one kind of alternative fuel. (Bio fuels). Which have proven to be awful both for the environment, and the economy. Did you know that the production of ethanol takes more water in the (name removed by moderator)ut that you get ethanol back? There are more fundamental environmental issues to be worried about. Global warming isn’t going to be an issue if we run out of drinking water. By polluting it (fertilizers for all that ethanol bound corn;)), using it frivolously and wasting it.

Sigh you want to tax the “over consumption” of gasoline. Why gasoline? why not oil? What is over consumption? Can an individual really over consume gasoline, wouldn’t that really be businesses. BTW, gasoline is already taxed, and it is a wonderful regressive tax for the poor trying to get to work. (I love how liberals always ignore their points in other threads to make an argument about AGW). I guess I am just a bleeding heart conservative. :rolleyes:

Pray tell, what individual action is going to lead to the harm of others? This is really the question. You can’t say my shower in the morning is going to lead to an increase in global temps, or my neighbors driving to work every day will. This is what encompasses sin.

I will however, oppose governmental measures to mitigate rising CO2 or rising temps, when it is going to damage the environment and economy. I will not oppose any individual efforts to try and save the environment (except for crazy types), but I will point out inconsistencies in the argument.

example: The new CFL light bubs take longer to manufacture, more energy, and have a more complicated manufacturing process, use heavy metals, and more materials generally, compared to an incandescent. So unless we can say these factories are especially “green” and clean, which I seriously doubt as they are made in countries with less environmental controls (mine were made in china), It seems that the manufacturing process is much dirtier than incandescent lightbulbs. Does the extended lifetime and energy savings make up for the extra pollution from manufacturing? I would like people to actually answer this before declaring that I am sinning by not having these bulbs.

The majority of my lamps actually have these lightbulbs right now, because I use to live in an area with a really unstable power grid. We burned out incandescent bulbs every 2 or 3 months. So we got some CFLs to see if they worked better, we certainly didn’t get the promised 5 years. We instead got 6 to 8 months. 🤷 I notice however, nobody is lobbying to fix the power grid, except for power companies. But wouldn’t you think, fixing the power grid would save everyone a lot of money and save a lot of energy, perhaps making harmful alternative fuels unnecessary and creating jobs? One can’t make money off fixing a public good, so it is probably going keep getting piecemeal maintenance, until there is some major failure of the power grid.

Ugh, for the record I hate long posts, like this one, and that is why I (besides the fact that not all of it needed addressing) is why I didn’t go point by point of your post.
 
…And about taxing overconsumptionof gasoline to reduce its price (and the price of ethanol? And why don’t you care about the people will starve and continue to starve from the rising environmental strain on food crops? Do you only care about those who starve for the sake of vindicating your political views?
This is a good point that I often raise that makes political ideologues squirm. If conservatives REALLY believed in the mitigating power of free markets, we would have an energy policy in which the cost of oil included ALL of its costs.

For example, if we need a 2 trillion dollar war every ten years in order to keep the Persian Gulf global oil supplies flowing, why should that cost be born by the general taxpayer? Shouldn’t it be rolled into the price of the oil being supplied?

We don’t need artificial subsidies on alternative energy sources. We just need to return to making things cost what they ACTUALLY cost instead of the nasty habit of putting it on the credit card for our great grandchildren to pay for.
 
Assuming anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is real and happening and harming and killing people (and others of God’s creatures), and we are all responsible for the greenhouse gases we emit (and responsible for reducing them in whatever feasible ways we can), how much of a sin would it be to deny ACC is happening, and refuse to do sensible things to reduce one’s greenhouse gases in practical and feasible ways?

A related question is how much of a sin is it not only to deny ACC & refuse to reduce one’s GHGs in any way, but also campaign vigorously to convince others that ACC is not happening, thereby convincing them not to reduce their GHGs?

I know both these would be wrong (assuming ACC is happening), but are they venial or serious sins? At what point does killing people become a serious sin? 10,000,000 people responsible for killing one person; 1000 people responsible for killing one person, 100 people responsible for killing one person, 10 people responsble for killing one person; or one killing one? Also, the intentionality – a person not really knowing about his/her contributions to others’ deaths (which, it seems, would not be a sin at all); a person not putting forth effort to understand how he/she might be contributing to others’ deaths (even though the information is easily available); a person refusing to accept what scientists, popes, and others (who claim ACC is real) say & not caring if he/she is contributing to others’ deaths; a person actually knowing ACC is real, but yet campaigning to convince others it is not real?

Is there some point at which it is a more serious sin or less serious sin.

NOTE: This is not for a discussion about whether or not ACC is real, only about whether IF it is real, how much of a sin would it be to deny ACC, refuse to reduce one’s contributions to it, and strive to convince others it is not real.
NOT a sin! This is arrigance on a god like scale to think that we (humans) could destroy the world. Besides the ACC movement is nothing more that a ponzi scheme that will make very very rich men even wealthier. Don’t forget that we EXHALE CO2. The volcano that erupted last year put more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the cars ever produced have combined. We could not destory the world even if we wanted to.
 
Hi all.

The USCCB are full tilt believers in man made global warming and thus advocate policies that treat it. At least, that’s what it said in that voter’s guide thing that’s on their website.

My question is, why are they so quick to pick a side?

I would expect them to say instead something along the lines of, “regardless of the extent to which man plays a role in climate change, it is important for man to treat the environment with respect and care.”

But they take it a step further and sound as if they’ve had quite a few sips of the kool-aid.

So, why do they take this position? Simply because it’s what everyone tells them?
 
Indeed, governmental policies designed to mitigate “global warming” are already killing people. Subsidies for ethanol and other alternative fuels have driven up food prices causing those in the third world to starve. People in forest rich areas are being made refugees or killed so they don’t clear their land for crops and farm land.
I fail to see how contributing to the death, homelessness, assault, of people now is going to mitigate any sin for a potential harm to people in the future.
I fail to see it either, but the green crowd is certainly convinced that not only do they need to ‘save the planet,’ everyone does.

My next question would have to be, “Save it for what?”
 
I fail to see it either, but the green crowd is certainly convinced that not only do they need to ‘save the planet,’ everyone does.

My next question would have to be, “Save it for what?”
In fairness, their answer would likely be "the next 2,000+ years worth of humanity and the other creatures we share the planet with.

A lot of greenies are goofy, I agree. But it isn’t unreasonable to look at the impact of today’s human environmental impact compared to a couple hundred years ago and wonder just how long it can go on without catatrophic damage. I just think it’s sad that those concerned have largely hung their hats on the CO2 bandwagon when other theats are more easily verifiable and imminent.
 
In fairness, their answer would likely be "the next 2,000+ years worth of humanity and the other creatures we share the planet with.

A lot of greenies are goofy, I agree. But it isn’t unreasonable to look at the impact of today’s human environmental impact compared to a couple hundred years ago and wonder just how long it can go on without catatrophic damage. I just think it’s sad that those concerned have largely hung their hats on the CO2 bandwagon when other theats are more easily verifiable and imminent.
👍
 
I made a specific argument against one kind of alternative fuel. (Bio fuels). Which have proven to be awful both for the environment, and the economy. Did you know that the production of ethanol takes more water in the (name removed by moderator)ut that you get ethanol back? There are more fundamental environmental issues to be worried about. Global warming isn’t going to be an issue if we run out of drinking water. By polluting it (fertilizers for all that ethanol bound corn;)), using it frivolously and wasting it.
I certainly agree with your point about ethanol. Using corn to manufactue ehtanol for use as a gasoline additive is a really poor use of an agricultural food product. Using corn to make ethanol raises corn prices and makes the gasoline less efficient. I hate having to unwillingly use ethanol as a fuel.
 
I don’t think it would be considered a sin at all to deny climate change. After all, climate change is just a theory. Evolution is practically even considered a fact by most scientists and the Church even says that evolution is likely the method God used to create us but it is still not a sin to not believe in evolution.
 
Why is it the first “global warming” alarmist happened to be the same NASA “scientist” that led the call in the late 1970’s about the coming Ice Age. Why is it that historians call it the “Opptimum” when around the year 1000 the earth was warmer- people thrived-Greenland was GREEN.What would be wrong with a warmer world whether mankind contributes to the warming or not. By the way we are at the apoggee of our orbit around the sun in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, meaning we are closer to the sun than in the last hundred or more years- possibility of alittle more warming?
Manmade climate change is a pseudo-religion taken over by the Marxist/Socialist persusion when they lost the contest of history-they only what to control every aspect of your life- energy use ,health care, investing.

See Solyndra, Ener1 and any other “businesses” run by the favored few who gave money to the Democrats- almost all are bankrupt or soon to be because the Ameican people have taken it on themselves to get the natural gas out of where it formerly was trapped- I know the local people’s water catches fire but there are videos from the 1930’ and 40’s where the water caught fire because of gas deposits real close to the surface- “fracking” is usually 5000 feet down -below the water table.
 
I don’t think it would be considered a sin at all to deny climate change. After all, climate change is just a theory. Evolution is practically even considered a fact by most scientists and the Church even says that evolution is likely the method God used to create us but it is still not a sin to not believe in evolution.
“Only a theory” isn’t a convincing argument. I say the evidence is overwhelming. Unlike with evolution, something is at stake. By continuing to consume fossil fuels excessively, a society can devastate the lives of other people. Refusing to do something (what’s more, to at least what could be easily done with almost no cost to us whatsoever) to avoid harming others or ourselves down the road is I think wrong. It’s not what one thinks, per se, but what one does about it. A tobacco company CEO may make millions marketing cigarettes to children, and while he may tell himself and wish he believed that that the science behind the effect of smoking on one’s health is “only a theory,” there comes a point where it ceases to be simply ignorance, and becomes willful denial, which is not excusable.
40.png
DLG123:
NOT a sin! This is arrigance on a god like scale to think that we (humans) could destroy the world. Besides the ACC movement is nothing more that a ponzi scheme that will make very very rich men even wealthier. Don’t forget that we EXHALE CO2. The volcano that erupted last year put more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the cars ever produced have combined. We could not destory the world even if we wanted to.
We can destroy the world; God made us stewards of it, recall; he did not make it steward of us. Everyone knows that nuclear weapons (made by us) could destroy the world many times over. It is not arrogance at all.

And us breathing CO2 is quite irrelevant. Our bodies need potassium, but inject enough of it into a person and they go into cardiac arrest and die. There is such a thing as too much of something.

And We don’t need to produce more CO2 than volcanoes to cause the temperature of the earth to increase. All we need is to is add a few % more to what is naturally produced and over the course of a few decades and the temperature rises enough to have substanital consequences. Ever learn the equation Pe^(rt)? Where a slight change in P (principle; this is the equation for continuous interest) will cause a significant change in the output of the function?
 
40.png
manualman:
I am not concerned with “global warming” because there is nothing I can do to stop it, if it is indeed caused by humans. I am however concerned with polluting and ruining our local ecology. : I recycle and try to save both water and energy. I don’t see what that has to do with the price of bread.
Um, yes you can. If everyone drove their cars less (and essentiall everyone could if they were less lazy; Americans generally drive a lot even when it is far from necessary), or drobe more fuel efficient cars, it would be do quite a bit of good; it would also save us all a lot of money. Refusal to do so simply the result of a loss of the concept of delayed gratification on the part of Americans.

If you simply can’t reduce your own excess emission of fossil fuels, then the government steps in. If you don’t want it to, then fine, do it yourself. Few people are willing to, however.

If everyone stopped throwing away so much bread or eating too much of it, then the price would go down.
Sailor Kenshin:
I fail to see it either, but the green crowd is certainly convinced that not only do they need to ‘save the planet,’ everyone does.

My next question would have to be, “Save it for what?”
So, you just don’t care about other human beings then? People can starve for generations, who knows, maybe your own grandchildren or great-grandchildren? Doesn’t matter to you?

Ok, what you have then is a moral issue, not a political one.
40.png
Manualman:
This is a good point that I often raise that makes political ideologues squirm. If conservatives REALLY believed in the mitigating power of free markets, we would have an energy policy in which the cost of oil included ALL of its costs.

For example, if we need a 2 trillion dollar war every ten years in order to keep the Persian Gulf global oil supplies flowing, why should that cost be born by the general taxpayer? Shouldn’t it be rolled into the price of the oil being supplied?

We don’t need artificial subsidies on alternative energy sources. We just need to return to making things cost what they ACTUALLY cost instead of the nasty habit of putting it on the credit card for our great grandchildren to pay for.
This is a good point and likely a viable solution. People of course have to believe a problem exists before they can begin to attempt to solve it.
40.png
FaithBuild18:
So, why do they take this position? Simply because it’s what everyone tells them?
I’d say because it’s true. Why be ambigious about it when they don’t have to?
 
Why is it the first “global warming” alarmist happened to be the same NASA “scientist” that led the call in the late 1970’s about the coming Ice Age. Why is it that historians call it the “Opptimum” when around the year 1000 the earth was warmer- people thrived-Greenland was GREEN.What would be wrong with a warmer world whether mankind contributes to the warming or not. By the way we are at the apoggee of our orbit around the sun in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, meaning we are closer to the sun than in the last hundred or more years- possibility of alittle more warming?
Manmade climate change is a pseudo-religion taken over by the Marxist/Socialist persusion when they lost the contest of history-they only what to control every aspect of your life- energy use ,health care, investing.

See Solyndra, Ener1 and any other “businesses” run by the favored few who gave money to the Democrats- almost all are bankrupt or soon to be because the Ameican people have taken it on themselves to get the natural gas out of where it formerly was trapped- I know the local people’s water catches fire but there are videos from the 1930’ and 40’s where the water caught fire because of gas deposits real close to the surface- “fracking” is usually 5000 feet down -below the water table.
Wow, where to begin. First of all, Greenland was never green. It was named Greenland to mislead competing exploereers I believe. It was never green though.

Secondly, proximity of the earth to the sun is not remotely the sole cause of temperature; in fact, the content of the atmosphere is far more significant for our purposes. It was precisely the fact that the earth retained more heat than early physicists projected it would given its distance to the sun that led Joseph Fourier to discover the Greenhouse effect about 200 years ago. And if you’d read any of the data, you’d know that the mean temperature is in fact higher than it was in 100 AD.

Thirdly, your drivel about Marxists, Democrats, Solyndra, etc. is all quite irrelevant to the truth. And a brief look at the Fortune 500 list should tell you that oil companies have a financial incentive to promote their way of viewing things that makes every alternative energy company in the world’s revenue combined look like pocket change.
 
Lynn,

I get it. You are correct that the Volt is geared much more luxury than the Cruze. If you were shopping Cadillac CTS and decided on the Volt as an alternative, I accept that as perfectly good reasoning. It’s not exactly ascetic reasoning (i.e. Cruze/Corolla), but then I certainly sympathize with the “I’ve done my time in clunkers, now I’m due” mentality as I’m in the middle of that long routine myself and will probably get where you are someday. The luxury of innovative technology is as legitimate as more hedonistic luxury and few AGW skeptics scorn those who buy cars with electric back-scratchers and similar nonsense. Enjoy the cool toy.
I would have been happy with a clonker with manual roll-up windows that had been converted to an EV. It’s my husband who wanted the luxury car, and has wanted to maintain our living standards (and even increase them)…and that has turned out for the best, bec we have been able to do all that AND reduced our GHGs by 75%, thereby allaying people’s fears that doing the EC (environmentally correct) thing will harm their personal economic well-being and/or the economy. It’s sort of like having your cake and eating it too, or seek ye first the Kingdom of God…
I’m particularly interested in your claims of how the global climate models are improving in their predictive ability as it contradicts some of what I’ve heard. As I understand it, the CO2 continues to climb, as have the predictions of global temperature, but that the measured temperatures in the last few years have been flat instead of the steady rise predicted. Sounds like worsening predictive capacity to me. I’m especially interested in your claims about confidence intervals tightening as the LACK of published confidence intervals in the materials I’ve read have left me quite suspicious. Can you point me to anything remotely readable by a layperson that includes enough tech details to disclose error analyses like that? I’m genuinely open to reading things that will change my mind, if well supported and reasoned.
Just came from a talk about such issues, and the overall warming has been happening; there is no dispute re that. It tends to go up and down year to year (or over a few years), but the overall trend is up – climate (unlike weather) requires at least several decades of data…which is why it took them so long to achieve sci certainty on GW, even tho they had the theory for over 100 years…teasing out of the signal from the noise of ordinary fluctuations.

Now the climate is impacted not only by GHGs, but also the sun and various other factors (earth wobble, tilt, non-circular orbit, etc.). The sun goes thru cycles of more and less irradiation…usually about an 11 year cycle. We have been in a “solar minimum” for some time now, and they expect it will either end or perhaps go into a deep & longer minimum. The point is if there were not the grossly increasing GHG factor, they would have expected the climate to have actually cooled well below the average for the past century, but instead it is a lot (in their terms) warmer than that average. The speaker today (works for NWS/NOAA) said what was worrisome to him and the scientists was the rapidity of these exponential GHG emission and the exponential warming.
The last truly educated outside (name removed by moderator)ut on the matter I have had from a source I consider truly unbiased (long time government climatologist (Oxford PhD) in a position NOT required to seek grant funding) opined to me in 2008 that the data so far was cause for concern, but that the confidence intervals involved made the results “interesting, but worthless” as grounds for culture changing political action. He has since retired and I lack well educated, unbiased minds to lean on regarding the matter these days.
Well, the physics behind the greenhouse effect is impeccable; it is a well-established, proven theory. It is really quite simple (unless one disputes this theory) that if you add more and more GHGs to the atmosphere it will warm the climate. It’s actually much more simple than people make it out to be. There are the other factors, but the working climate scientists are very well aware of these, and the increased GHGs are the only explanation for the current warming. The first studies to reach sci confidence (at the .05 level) on AGW came out in 1995, and since then 1000s of further studies have only made this claim more and more robust – it’s a fact by now, not at all disputed by working climate scientists.

However, laypersons concerned about life on planet earth, including JPII, have been rightly calling on people to mitigate AGW for over 20 years. Since doing so actually helps one’s pocket book and the economy, it is troublesome why there are those who fail to acknowledge the very well-establish science AND realize all the wonderful benefits of mitigating AGW.

Another way of viewing it, if AGW were even a hoax, it would be the best hoax in the world, if it could make people reduce their GHG emissions in cost-effective sensible ways, thereby mitigating many other real problems, such as local pollution, acid rain, military actions re oil, etc.
 
We only have a supposed 100 years of oil left. Supposing man-made global warming is real, don’t you think the drop off in CO2 being burnt at that point and leading up to it would be enough to fix it? The fact is green technologies are not where they need to be to take over for oil and In my opinion every let-down electric car or windmill we put up now unnecessarily is a waste of money that could be going into more research for the future. 10 years from now everything that has been made will be worthless. The windmills from 10 years ago are a shadow of what they can put up today and were a waste.

The fact is energy companies including the oil companies are very invested in alternative energy for the future. In my mind though its time has not come and anything outside of research into it that is not cost effective is a waste of money. If its something that is saving people money now I’m all for it. The $10,000 tax credit for the Volt is a joke though and is counter productive.
 
NOT a sin! This is arrigance on a god like scale to think that we (humans) could destroy the world. Besides the ACC movement is nothing more that a ponzi scheme that will make very very rich men even wealthier. Don’t forget that we EXHALE CO2. The volcano that erupted last year put more CO2 into the atmosphere than all the cars ever produced have combined. We could not destory the world even if we wanted to.
I have agreed it is not a sin, if people truly do not think they are contributing to global warming (thru industrial emissions, not thru breathing) or global warming is not happening. We went over this…
 
The problem here is that there don’t seem to be many practical and feasible ways to reduce carbon gasses…
It takes a lot of prayer and investigation, but there are 100s of ways to reduce it cost-effectively, without harming one’s finances; we have done so down to a 75% reduction, saving many $1000s over the past 22 years, while increasing our living standard.

For instance, our $6 low-flow showerhead (with off-on soap-up switch) has saved us ovr $2000 in the past 22 years (we did a bucket/stopwatch test to find our water savings). Now up in IL we did feel a slight decrease in water pressure from the shower (so a slight lowering of living standards), but here in Texas, where the city water pressure seems to be higher, we do not notice any difference in the shower spray.

One has to think that nearly all products have a GHG component, not just fuel, so the basic principles of “reduce, reuse, and recycle” can do much to reduce our GHGs – in addition buying products of recycled materials, and go on alt energy when feasible/affordable. One has to think of energy & resource conservation & efficiency.

Off the shelf technology can reduce America’s GHGs by at least 50%, and perhaps even 75% while strengthening the economy. We just have to do it. Those legislative measures are simply intended to nudge people in that direction; but they will be ineffective if people continue to refuse to realize the vast savings of “going green.”

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
 
Off the shelf technology can reduce America’s GHGs by at least 50%, and perhaps even 75% while strengthening the economy. We just have to do it. Those legislative measures are simply intended to nudge people in that direction; but they will be ineffective if people continue to refuse to realize the vast savings of “going green.”
I am sympathetic towards your previous arguments and supporting evidence. However I am not easily convinced about this one. I’ve taken a couple courses now discussing alternative energy and the take home message has simply been that at this point in time they either aren’t worth it or are not viable at the moment.

The extent to which man impacts the climate, I have no scientific opinion, nor do I really care to investigate it personally. But even if we are the sole contributing factor, it is entirely impractical (in my opinion) to expect mankind to go off oil and adopt a new technology right now. Especially in America, oil is incredibly cheap. Even with our rising gas prices, we’ve been paying a lot less here than folks in Europe and most other parts of the world for many years. Fuel cells especially (which I learned about for an entire semester), are such in impractical technology that all research trying to further them would better be spent elsewhere. Business aside, very few technologies out there right now provide much of an improvement for mother nature. Electricity especially, is a worse means of energy production than oil. So long as we make electricity from coal, electric cars and hybrids will be doing much more damage to the environment than anything powered by oil.

Furthermore, “going green” is by no means cheap from the perspective of the consumer. “Going green” is good idea because it’s a hot technology. It’s good for the economy in the same way Apple products are good for the economy. It’s a hip trend, and though you pay a premium for it you’re doing the corporations a big favor. In all fairness though, the only way to make technological progress in this area is for people to do what you suggest and just buy it anyways.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top