in reply to Re: Re: Not all Canadians suck...
in thread Not all Canadians suck...

USA spends about 3 times more gas per capita than Germany or UK. USA produces cca 25% of total world CO2 polution. These numbers are from Newsweek, not from GreenPeace, so I tend to believe it. If USA drivers swith from SUV to station wagons, more gas will be saved that is ever expected to be drilled out from new Alaska fields (ANWR?, I guess). USA taxpayers will pay I believe 10 Billions for big oil companies (like Cheney's Halliburton) for tax incentives to drill there. Billions of gallons of gas will be released into atmosphere. Estimates say that average temperature will increase 5-10 degrees (F) in next 100 years. And all this can be reversed by some pittances, some funny forrests planted? Forrests in Carbon era needed tens of millions of years to put all this CO2 out of atmosphere, to make coal and oil. No natural preserves in USA can repeat this in next 100 years. It ist not ever funny.

USA has resources to create i.e. hybrid car for SUV, to it will have a chance to be sold outside USA (now no european country I guess cannot afford this gas guzzler). And cheap hybrid car making 80 miles per gallon will be a hit in europe (where gas tas is not cca 10% like in USA, but 200% and more). Butt stricter norms were rejected in USA.

After temperature rise and ocean level will increase (3 feet are expected within 100 years), some countries will struggle, but has resources to prevail (like Netherland), but some islands in Pacific and Indian ocean will be just plain wiped out. What will do these desperate people? What you will do in such a case? Hurry up to see Venice, it is still above sea level for now.

Increased ocean temperature means increased number and power of hurricanes. So more hurricanes like Mitchell are coming to Latin America.

Calculating cost of oil from cost of drilling and processing is like calculation cost of mortgage from cab fare on the way to get to the bank.
Ecologic thinking is hard to plant to politics. It does not pay: for a nation, is chater not protect environment, because cost of cleaning is shared between nations, so share of big polluter is paid off by less polluting nations (in terms of illness, agriculture changes etc.). And yes, I know about Clean Air act, and USA did a lot implementing it, and I applaud.

Another reason why politics is not interested in ecology: Results will not be visible by next elections, so why bother? And part of population most affected - childern, who will need to clean all this mess - cannot vote at all.

I love America, and it just breaks my heart when USA is doing things like backing out of Kyoto. In all european countries Greens are much stronger than in USA (where they played a role of spoiler last time) and just cannot believe that.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not all Canadians suck...
by E-Bitch (Pilgrim) on Sep 15, 2001 at 00:42 UTC
    As an American, I take great offense to your comments. You have no credible sources to back up your statistics.

    SUVs: German car companies (BMW, Mercedes Benz) both produce SUVs. It is not just an American problem.

    Hybrid Cars: Quick tip buddy, they already exist in America, and were developed in Japan. Dont hand me that "we Americans dont want them" crap. Two models exist: The Toyota Prius, and the Honda Insight, and both get exceptional MPGs. Or, you could do one of the most sensible things, and buy a motorcycle which typically gets both better gas mileage (mine gets 4 times better gas mileage than a Honda Civic), and has a much better power to weigh ratio (see, fuel efficent vehicles can be fun!).

    Global Warming: Hello? ICE AGE? The earth has been warming since the last ICE AGE, by the way. That's why the Ice Age stopped. Thats also why people can survive in Siberia, Canada, Alaska, Norway, Sweden, etc. And as Ven'Tatsu said in the previous reply, we cannot even say that humanity is the cause of it. Certainly we didnt cause the end of the ice age, however many thousands of years ago this occured.

    Thanks for playing.
    _________________________________________
    E-Bitch
    Tempora Mutantur Nos et Mutamur in Illis
    "The Times are Changed Even as We are Changed in Them"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Not all Canadians suck...
by Ven'Tatsu (Deacon) on Sep 14, 2001 at 22:31 UTC
    There is no nice way to say this so I will be blunt. Your statistics are completely flawed.
    I cannot argue that there is or is not global warming, it would be insane to. The fact is we have about 50 years of valid statistical data on the temperature trends of the earth. If you go back farther than that the statistics are not comprehensive enough or are to inaccurate to be statistically valid. Add to that detailed data has only been collected for about the past 20 years on global temperature changes.
    It takes 5 years of data to make a valid extrapolation of 1 year into the future for simple cyclical systems. You're looking at extrapolating 100 years of data from 50 at best! You would need another 450 years of data to make that assumption. And weather is not even a simple cyclical system, it many orders of magnitude more complex. When these statistics are used to look 10 years a head, the limit of their conceivable accuracy, you see only about a tenth to a quarter of a degree increase at the upper bounds of the margin of error.
    There has also has not been an attempt to isolate human interaction from natural cyclical events like the activity cycle of the sun. The sun reached the peak of its multi year cycle during this past year. Its energy output has been on the rise for many years now. Most models of global temperature don't take into account the increase of solar radiation over the past years. (Hey there ecologist not astronomers =) With the peak of the solar cycle past solar radiation will reduce over many years till the cycle starts over. But that is not included in current models so as solar radiation drops, and the extra heat that produces on heart drops proportionally those models will diverge from the true temperature.
    Any so called expert that can claim to predict the temperature change for the next 100 years is either guessing wildly, ignorant, or plain lying.

    Did you know that many of the leading scientists that are crusading to stop global warming today were crusading about 'global cooling' in the 1970's? It amazes me that they have gone from claiming that the temperature of the earth is going to drop by 5-10 degrees over the next 100 years to it's going to increase by 5-10 degrees over the next 100 years. They even proposed to congress that we burn more fossil fuels and spread ash over the arctic ice pack so it will absorb more light from the sun!

    The forest (and other natural preserves) and farm land in the US already consume more CO2 than the US produces. How can you say that it would take "tens of millions of years to put all this CO2 out of atmosphere" when the US is already not producing any net CO2?

    Hybrid cares are a nice idea but since there is no clean energy source that can provide the volume energy to run a passenger car the point is moot. The electricity for that hybrid car has to be made some where, and most of the power in the world is still made by burning fossil fuels, that still produce CO2. While electric and hybrid cars are better than pure internal combustion cars the miles per gallon statistics are usually very misleading, as they don't include any power requirements out side the gas.

    Don't take me for some lets destroy the earth freak, I believe seriously in protecting the environment. But there are better things to do than worry about problems that don't exist.
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