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TechnoratiOur Choice: Control Carbon or Be Cooked
I never much liked the idea of arms control. During the Cold War, we managed our nuclear arsenals rather than reduced them. We treated our nukes like huge, dangerous animals. We restricted their movements but gave them ample care and feeding. Until recently, getting rid of the animals altogether wasn't part of the political agenda. After all, our leaders believed that these beasts were useful. They scared away the covetous neighbors.
We have a similar approach to our production of carbon emissions, which are quickly raising the temperature of our planetary home. We get excited about a few new windmills, the latest type of electric car, or a more energy-efficient refrigerator. But this is just tinkering around the edges. Our leaders are willing to control our fossil fuel economy but not to embark on a serious program to disarm it. After all, we believe that our huge, carbon-belching beasts—the coal-fired plants, the SUVs—are useful. They keep our economies strong.
But as long as we maintain our carbon control approach we will be, literally, cooked.
The latest sobering study, from the United Nations Environment Program, argues that even if the international community enacts every climate policy proposed at this point, global temperatures will rise 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of this century. That's nearly twice the temperature hike that scientists predict will spell irreversible climate chaos.
World leaders are starting to realize the urgency of this situation. In the lead-up to the Copenhagen meeting in December, which will ideally produce a much stronger climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, we've begun to see the inklings of a reverse carbon race. Yukio Hatoyama, The new Japanese Prime Minister, kicked things off at a recent UN summit by pledging reductions of 25% from 1990 levels by 2020. China, a much larger emitter of greenhouse gases, promised that renewable energy sources will account for 15% of its total energy output by 2020. The tiny island nation of Maldives trumped everybody by vowing to go carbon neutral by 2020. (That is, if it's still above water a decade from now.)
The United States hasn't yet participated in this latest virtuous circle of carbon reductions. President Barack Obama must travel to a place threatened by the rising tide—New Orleans, Dhaka, Kiribati—and commit the United States to leading the reverse carbon race. Global warming deserves its own version of his Prague speech on nuclear abolition. The time for carbon disarmament is now.
38 Comments so far
Show AllI am new at this but please tell me how we can be cooked when we will be dead be cause from what I remember from basic high school biology class on plant life, the plant needs Carbon to breath so it can exhale oxygen we need to breath. If you take away the CO2 the plant dies and then we die(although some of you might want that). Donnot forget that animals, like the cute kitty and puppy, also need oxygen to live so you condem them too.
The other thing I remember from high school is that back in the 14th and 15th centuries the climate was warmer than now. How could that be? We had no cars, trucks, or fossil fuels. No big factories, so how were they warmer? Oh, that's right! The sun spots were real active then. Did you know that Greenland got its name beacuse it was really GREEN at that time? They even grew grapes for wine!
It's a shame nation 1,
That all you remember is high school biology. Didn't you go to college? You might have learned something beyond a child's basic comprehension of the world. Photosynthesis, of which you allude, cannot take place without PLANTS. All of the world's great Rain forests are almost gone, the last two: Borneo and Brazil are a shadow of their former selves just a few years ago. Plankton is dying off in all the oceans for some reason. I think it's coal plant dust containing mercury that's doing it, but it doesn't matter if the cause is sun spots or dumping toxins at sea, the result is the same: Runaway CO2 (which equals runaway Greenhouse Gases).
Sunspots have been inactive beyond the current 11 year cycle. When they kick in, we may get cooked further.
Lastly, the southern tip of Greenland 500 years ago has little to do with the inland ice sheet, which then was solid ice. Today, its melting faster than your high-school snow cone on a hot summer day. But still, that was possibly an early warning also, that too many humans can cause climate change and cause ice bound regions to break up and turn green. Siberia was not named Greenland, but it's green today.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
This will make your eyes bleed, I heard NPR report on it last week:
http://www.plantsneedco2.org
A Right-Wing Republican's Night-time Prayer
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray to God my soul to keep
I voted for Bush the Texacutioner
Who put more people to death than an executioner
The highest execution rate of any governor in history
How he was elected president is still a mystery
The biggest serial killer since Timothy McVeigh,
mocks Karla's pleas for clemency during her final days
I hold stoutly to my world view
Despite being contradicted by what is proven true
I believe the earth to be only 4000 years old
“Intelligent” design is the view I hold
Even though evolution explains how life changed and adapted
verified by countless experiments not retracted
the scientific facts should be stricken as inadmissible
teaching creationism to our children is permissible
Take some parts literally, others out of place
And I can use the Bible to judge the whole human race
Pat Robertson said 9/11 was a punishment from God
That innocents died instead of him he didn’t find odd
For lifestyles of feminism, liberalism, and being gay
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said over 3,000 people died that day
That God will punish them for their remark
Pride has hidden from a judgmental heart
“After the last tree standing is felled”
“Christ will come back” I heard James Watt tell
you see evangelicals don’t care about generations
because they won’t have to be here to face elimination
“compassionate” conservatives fantasize about journeying through the air
As Left Behind: The Series plays out below everywhere
While pollution they caused brings about ecological collapse
It doesn’t bother them that people will die perhaps
by Cherokee American
oh boy
"Earth was so much warmer" God, what a laugh. They died when they couldn't feed themselves, or live off the ice, as the Eskimo's tried to teach them. Thanks for the humor, Exxon.
200 years ago, Laki blew its top. Are you really going to depend on a volcano to rescue us from global warming?
from one blog: "Volcanoes compounded the problems of the Little Ice Age. In 1783, the Laki volcano erupted in Iceland--the last fissure eruption in that country’s history. Laki killed 20 per cent of the Icelandic population, with many killed by fluoride poisoning. Toxic gases and particulate matter killed about 20,000 people downwind in Britain. One of the victims was Anne Boulton, wife of Matthew Boulton the manufacturer. Benjamin Franklin, like Boulton a member of the Lunar Society, figured out the cause was a volcano. And the winter of 1783-1784 was particularly bad in the Midlands; Staffordshire suffered through a six week stretch of cold a modern Chicagoan would’ve found unpleasant. It was cold enough in London for the banker Thomas Coutts to mention it in more than passing in his letters.
Laki was a pop compared to the massive explosions of Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 that resulted in 1816 being “the year without a summer”. Don’t think weather can’t affect literature. FRANKENSTEIN by Mary Shelley and “The Darkness” by Lord Byron appeared in tribute to that gloomy year. " end quote
What evidence do you have that solar cycles caused the little ice age? What evidence do you have that they are causing this cycle of warming? NONE. Yet, you accuse me of adherence to a 'secular religion'? How about yourself?
Google "2000 year temperature comparison" and take a look at the reconstructed temperature record of the last 2000 years. No one denies the medieval warm period, or the little ice age that followed it. But do you really think, looking at that graph, that they were anywhere NEAR what we are facing today? According to this article, if you drew out that graph to 2100, the temperature anomaly would go to 3 C, which is OFF THE CHART!!! I have a feeling that, by then, even people like YOU will get it. But, by then, it may be too late.
Great post ubrew12.
"The First American" by historian H.W. Brands is a great book about Ben Franklin and his "Farmer's Almanac" which recorded all manner of weather and other natural observations. Just like Mount Pinatubo in 1991, a volcano that blew miles of cubic material into the stratosphere, was recorded by Franklin in 1783. Such an event will circle the globe cooling it significantly.
The GOP canard: "maybe the sun is doing it" is all the more reason to outlaw the internal combustion engine. Who cares what the cause is Faux News Fans? We're still going to all cook if you don't park your 4x4 SUV, and shut down the coal plants. I'd rather sit around in the dark every night and be able to breathe than live a WaterWorld horror during the day, hugging the air conditioner and oxygen bottle for dear life.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Much of the thinking here requires a reality check.
Here it is.
Stop letting off hot air.
Stop talking of leading.
Just do it.
We'll spend three trillion dollars on war before Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iran ever ends, if it ever does. How many windmills could we have built for three trillion dollars? Well, if the cost $3 million each (I have no idea what they cost, but could it be that much?) that would be 1 million windmills. I've read that each one can power either 400 or 4000 homes each. So let's call it 400 each. That would be 400 million homes powered by wind alone. That would be a billion people. Do we have a billion people in the U.S. yet? No, the wind doesn't blow everywhere all the time, but a million windmills would give us enough overcapacity to power the whole country.
I guess it is better on the whole, though, to kill brown people 12,000 miles from home. It certainly makes more sense from an economic viewpoint to do the killing. Its just plain more fun than building all those windmills.
Great post Kent,
You must of hit close to the military mark, since you even woke up the zombie!
;-)
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Likewise, one-eighth the land area of Arizona, put into solar thermal power (which is 19th century technology and offers BASE power: 24-7) couldn't possibly cost $1 trillion. More like $200 billion. And yet, it would produce enough power to power the entire United States, no other power source required.
These and other calculations give some indication of you fvck-up the priorities of this nation are. The last thing the powers that rule America want is a source of power that is FREE. By controlling the fuel, they control the rest of us.
Thats a lie. They oppose SOME developments, and frankly, so do I. But there is plenty of alternative energy possibilities out there to power America. If I understand you correctly, you prefer the status quo: to spend that money bringing 'democracy' to Afghanistan?
America's carbon emissions have already dropped 9% since 2007 with barely any effort to actually reduce them.
http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?
/plan_b_updates/2009/update83
How soon could we go carbon neutral, and even turn into a carbon sink, if the country as a whole actually tried to? A hell of a lot sooner than "80% reduction by 2050", for sure.
Of course, the main obstacle would be severely curtailing military activity. A second, which politically may be just as tough, would be converting our mechanized agriculture and fake food system into local, organic, or permaculture operations.
When I think of how quickly and creatively we could change if coal and oil were to suddenly disappear from the earth, and when I think of how long humans lived and evolved before the coal/oil era, it makes me sad.
Look at the graph at your link: CO2 emissions dropped just as much in the late 70's, before they started climbing at the same rate as before.
Yes, throwing huge amounts of Americans into unemployment will cut CO2 emissions. Those out of work people sitting at home, not commuting or going on vacation, sure save lots of CO2 emissions. Sounds like a plan.
If the country as a whole was to be unemployed, we could probably get those emissions down to 0% in a year or two.
Or, we could plan to rapidly replace coal-fired utilities with wind turbines and solar PV peaker plants, transform our vehicle fleet into plug-in EV's with minimal petroleum use, and yes, start transforming agriculture away from massive petroleum inputs.
And as we need less crude oil, military operations will scale back (since securing oil supplies is one of their main missions right now).
Shifting to renewable energy sources under elite control is not the answer. Elites will build five times the necessary capacity, which depresses the price, which addicts the people to the excess capacity. Then the elites will declare the copper in the generator coils a "strategeric" US "national interest" and lurch upon copper producers like they do oil producers today. Lithium batteries? Ok, lithium producers too. A half-dozen aircraft carrier groups will patrol the coast of Chile. On and on, as a hungry growing population needs more and more juice and everyone knows that "the merkan way is non-negotiable".
This is why we have to nip the problem in the bud. The problem isn't this commodity versus that commodity. The problem is inside the shriveled little hearts of the elite, and we have to contain them, i.e. criminalize their current behavior and enforce the law against them. This is what Cuba did and just look at Cuba's carbon footprint.
All,
I can't look at Cuba. The bushmonkey made it a crime to go down there. Maybe he just didn't want me to know what a happy paradise it is. ??????
Poor countries are better imho. They don't have a population mesmerized staring at Faux News. They don't have many useless cars. Why transport your body long distances jerking along with all the other morons trying to kill themselves all the time? It's horrible. In poor countries people stay local. They have more time off. They don't work weekends or holidays like we do. They don't have mortgages since they're too poor to pour their life and soul into an American house (an Albatross of stupid sticks and mortar which is nothing more than a target for insurance companies and taxes.) Poor countries don't have 15 intel agencies and scores of overlapping death and police squads "protecting" the citizens from exercising their "rights" all the time. No DEA, DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA, CHP, IRS, DOD, NPS, CSI, NorthCom, Sherrif, Fish and Game, Ranger this, Ranger that, Blackwater, Wackenhut etc..... riding around in armies and airforces of helicopters, paddiewaggons and boats and buses.
I mean, everywhere you go in the USSA these days you're constantly being intimidated by some red neck on steroids with a badge but no number, just itching to tase you for the smallest perceived resistance to his goose-stepping high-handedness.
Give me a simple island where the police are polite and call you "sir" with respect, and only have one round in the gun on their hip (if even that) since they can't afford ammo! What a paradise to live in a state with a weak central government, without constant intimidation! When I must go back, back, back, to the USSA, it's like showing up in 1938 Berlin. We all march along in dread silence down a cattle chute being treated, not like citizens, but like criminals. "Step over here, Step over there. (no please, no smile) Where have you been? Why? Hmmmmmm. You sure travel a lot"
And suddenly, your colon is destroyed by piles of fake food everywhere. But not a single natural thing to eat at all. Oh yes it says it's natural, but it's been piped and stored in plastic-lined tubes and containers all leeching YGD's (You Gonna Dies) if you keep eating this chit.
The answer is to go low-tech imho. Default on everything and refuse to play ball anymore. Downsize to two suitcases and go move in with the peasants on some island somewhere. We've only got till about 2050 or so, and then this dream too is impossible.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"Or, we could plan to rapidly replace coal-fired utilities with wind turbines and solar PV peaker plants, transform our vehicle fleet into plug-in EV's with minimal petroleum use, and yes, start transforming agriculture away from massive petroleum inputs."
That's exactly my point. Just having a crappy economy already lowered our emissions 9%, purely by coincidence. If we turn our economy towards lowering carbon emissions, it could be done much faster while also getting much of the population into rewarding and fulfilling jobs.
We don't have to have a crappy economy just to lower the emissions. Where are those green jobs that we were promised? We could have a great economy and reduce emissions with green jobs instead of more government regulation that's a boon to Wall Street.
They pretty much walked out the door when Van Jones was kicked out of the White House.
Thanks a lot, Obama.
I don't think it'd be all that difficult for the government to directly buy up or build factories to manufacture and then install renewable energy plants. They're just not doing it.
Oh yes, I almost forgot. Who is in charge of that push to promote green jobs growth now that Van Jones is gone? I don't want to move to San Francisco just to get one. I'm already cash strapped having been unemployed for a long time and I just moved to another state to live with one of my friends until I would be ready to find an apartment of my own. I wished I could be doing a green job for a living that pays well and with the pride that I am saving the environment.
I don't trust the government to do anything right as it is. I would be shocked if they went full throttle on your suggestion.
Global warming makes perfect sense. It's physics, plain and simple. Burn carbon, heat the atmosphere and the seas. Keep it up, die.
Corporations can see only three months ahead, to the next quarterly earnings statement. Unless they are prodded, regulated, and when necessary, slammed by government, they won't change their ways and you and your children will pay the price. You'll die from today's stupidity and shortsightedness of government and from the greed of corporations.
You want tax rebates? Or what? You'll hold your breath while methane and hydrogen sulfide replace oxygen?
There's no way out of this without massive realignments in economies, in thinking, in action. The planet right now cannot support six billion people, and it's not going to get any better. You're worried about getting a green job? In a few years you'll be lucky if you can get a box of corn flakes to get through the week on. Stop whining about your paycheck and either resign yourself to a short, crappy, deadly future, or educate yourself and start doing something about getting the power structures off their fat asses.
So let's just talk more doom and gloom and stay the failing course. Yeah, that'll solve the global warming crisis. Why do you call for Armageddon ? You might as well just join the ruling class with your pessimist talk and keep laughing at us like that. Yeah, we're bad and we should all be punished anyway. Don't bother fixing the problem. We should all face damnation. You sound exactly like the conservative Republicans I used to be a part of.
I'm not calling for Armageddon. I'm saying it's coming if we don't act. If you'd bother to read what I actually wrote you might have been able to figure that out.
I read your post and you attacked all of my suggestions for humane actions without merit. I hate Malthusians who blame overpopulation for everything. They ought to be executed so that the rest of us can think positively and get it done right. Your attack of green jobs and calls for making renewables affordable sounds Reagan-esque to me and that makes me mad.
What are you, fourteen? You leap into conclusions and error like a hormonal teenager. Yeah, yeah, I know, ad hominem and all that. But what the hell, you just decided to execute me for being something I'm not, so it's ad hominem all the way down. Besides, ad hominem is the only way to go when the person you're engaging insists on muddying the waters with statements derived from poor reading skills, a failure of critical thinking, and an apparently profound desire to avoid reality.
Well, it's been fun, but your other fans here are apparently waiting for you to make some sense, so I won't get in their way by making any more silly comments to you.
("Reagan-esque?" I hated that pathetic, ignorant s.o.b.)
Michael, I've asked this question twice now, and you've dodged it both times. You might as well answer it now, because you can be certain sure that I'll relentlessly continue to ask it until you either answer or are completely discredited by your evasive silence:
Exactly *WHO* would benefit from increasing the world's human population?
Monsanto?
Good call, Z. Let's see whether Michael will own up.
What about green jobs that we were promised? Why do we need more government regulation when changing the jobs from pollution based to green based will automatically reduce the carbon footprints? Who will care about global warming as long as there are fewer jobs and fewer people unable to buy? We need jobs that pay better, companies that will provide carbon neutral/negative replacements at cheaper prices, or have our government give us tax rebates towards the purchase of those energy efficient products. Global warming will make no sense until this is addressed.