So do nothing?
The articles you are posting in no way are advocating doing nothing. The right mocks the very idea of doing anything and disputes that there is any such thing as global warming while there is no scientific debate that we are heating the earth and there is no arguing that this isn’t bad. This shouldn’t be political and the only reason it is political is because the energy industry is making it so. Your answer of doing nothing IS the position the energy industry is backing. Our own congressman wants to ban the government from even studying climate change.
You will nearly always be able to find points of disagreement in the science, that’s just how science works, but that is no reason to do nothing. The arguments being made in your articles are over what modeling to use, not on if global warming is real, or bad. The argument over the impact ranges from really bad to cataclysmic. The rest of the arguments are what to do about it. There is NO valid argument for doing nothing in the scientific community.
M’kay. Let’s forget Al Gore and other's contribution to politicizing it and lay the blame soley on energy companies. That’s not revisionist nor anything even close. For what it’s worth, every major oil company does have a division which works on alternative energy solutions.
Dr. Unger’s article makes an interesting case that what was once thought of as a great solution to global warming abatement with reforestation may actually make it worse. There are far more examples posited by geoscientists over the years from white roofs to shooting massive amounts of human cremains into space to reflect solar radiation which has drawn plenty of doubt and criticism from others in the scientific community.
Science is not static, understanding of science is constantly evolving. The more we think we know, the more we find we need to learn.
Rushing to a conclusion leads to unintended consequences. Here’s a gem from the late 1990’s on automotive catalytic converter’s contribution to global warming to illustrate the point:
E.P.A. Says Catalytic Converter Is Growing Cause of Global Warming
E.P.A. Says Catalytic Converter Is
Growing Cause of Global Warming
By Matthew L. Wald
Copyright 1998 The New York Times
May 29, 1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------
WASHINGTON -- The catalytic converter, an invention that has sharply
reduced smog from cars, has now become a significant and growing
cause of global warming, according to the Environmental Protection
Agency.
Hailed as a miracle by Detroit automakers even today, catalytic
converters have been reducing smog for 20 years. The converters break
down compounds of nitrogen and oxygen from car exhaust that can
combine with hydrocarbons, also from cars, and be cooked by sunlight
into smog.
But researchers have suspected for years that the converters
sometimes rearrange the nitrogen-oxygen compounds to form nitrous
oxide, known as laughing gas. And nitrous oxide is a potent
greenhouse gas, more than 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide,
the most common of the gases, that is warming the atmosphere,
according to experts.
This spring, the EPA published a study estimating that nitrous oxide
now comprises about 7.2 percent of the gases that cause global
warming. Cars and trucks, most fitted with catalytic converters,
produce nearly half of that nitrous oxide, the study said. (Other
sources of nitrous oxide include everything from nitrogen-based
fertilizer to manure from farm animals.)
The EPA study also showed that nitrous oxide is one of a few gases
for which emissions are increasing rapidly. Collectively known as
greenhouse gases, they trap heat in the earth's atmosphere.
The increase in nitrous oxide, the study notes, stems from the growth
in the number of miles traveled by cars that have catalytic
converters. And the problem has worsened as improvements in catalytic
converters, changes that have eliminated more of the nitrogen-oxygen
compounds that cause smog, have conversely produced more nitrous
oxide.
Wylie J. Barbour, an EPA official who worked on the recently
published inventory, said that the problem created by the converter
is classic. "You've got people trying to solve one problem, and as is
not uncommon, they've created another."
Nitrous oxide, or N2O, is not regulated because the Clean Air Act was
written in 1970 to control smog, not global warming. And no
regulations exist to control gases that are believed to cause global
warming.
The United States and the other industrialized nations agreed in
Kyoto, Japan, last December to lower emissions of greenhouse gases to
5 percent below 1990 levels, over the next 10 to 15 years, but the
agreement has not been approved by the Senate, and no implementing
rules have been written.
"This hadn't really been on people's radar screen until climate
change started becoming an issue," said one EPA official involved in
reducing pollution from cars, who asked not to be identified by name.
The EPA has not proposed a solution at this point, and is seeking
public comment on its study. Auto industry experts say they could
solve the problem by tinkering with the catalytic converter, but some
environmentalists suggest that the growing production of nitrous
oxide is yet another reason to move away from gasoline-powered cars.
The EPA's study estimated that nitrous oxide may represent about one-
sixth of the global warming effect that results from gasoline use.
"It's like, clean is not green," said Sheila Lynch, executive
director of the Northeast Alternative Vehicle Coalition, a public-
private partnership that encourages non-traditional power sources.
Another expert, Christopher S. Weaver, an engineering consultant who
wrote a study on the subject for the environmental agency, said, "We
haven't cared enough to establish standards."
Precisely how much nitrous oxide the converters produce remains an
issue. A report used by the EPA in preparing its greenhouse gas
study, calculated that a car with a fuel economy of about 19 miles a
gallon would produce .27 grams of nitrous oxide per mile. That
represents an amount that is about one-third the limit of emissions
for nitrogen oxide, the chemicals causing smog.
Steven H. Cadle, a research scientist at General Motors, said, "it's
a huge number." In contrast, an older car without a catalytic
converter produces much larger amounts of nitrogen oxides, but only
about a tenth as much nitrous oxide, the greenhouse gas.
The EPA calculated that production of nitrous oxide from vehicles
rose by nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 1996 as older cars without
converters have neared extinction. Using a standard unit of measure
for global warming gases, millions of metric tons of carbon
equivalent, nitrous oxide emissions rose to 54.7 million tons from
36.7 million during those years, the study said.
The contradictory impact of the converter has not been lost on
environmental officials or industry experts, who continue to debate
not only the extent of the growing problem as well as how to reduce
the emissions in future years.
Ned Sullivan, the head of the Maine Department of Environmental
Protection, said the converter problem requires a "comprehensive"
response. "This specific issue fits into a broader context that our
regulatory system has tended to deal with pollutants on an
individual, rather than a comprehensive, basis," he said.
He and others favor moving away from today's typical car design, a
big gasoline engine driving the wheels, to electric cars. Maine would
like electric cars. Another solution is hybrid cars, which use small,
efficient engines running on gasoline to help turn the wheels and to
charge batteries for electric motors that also run the wheels. Those
have much higher fuel economy, and thus lower greenhouse gas
emissions.
Car industry experts, however, favor less drastic changes. They
propose cutting nitrous oxide production by adjusting catalytic
converters in future models. They suspect that the gas is produced
when the converter is warming up, and believe the converters could be
redesigned to reach optimum temperature faster. That would also help
them destroy other pollutants better.
Weaver said that measurements on more kinds of cars and light trucks
would be needed to be certain about the size of the problem. But
Weaver said, "It is quite clear that you produce nitrous oxide in a
catalyst, in some circumstances."
At the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group, an
expert on transportation pollution, Roland Hwang, said, "We can't be
pushing forward trying to reduce smog while making the global warming
problem worse; we can't have programs that undercut each other." He
said this was evidence that the transportation system would have to
use something besides gasoline.
Cadle, of General Motors would not go that far. But, he said, "You
have to be holistic and try and look at everything, which is
obviously difficult."
So let me get this straight. According to the EPA we're still gonna cook to death, but we'll die laughing thanks to their meddling.
I have no problem with reducing emissions where practical. For a variety of reasons, less emissions is a good thing.
I’m a global warming skeptic, yet my behavior aligns better with reducing emissions than others I hear banging the global warming drum. My wife and I frequently walk to dinner if it’s within a mile or two of home. Sometimes I commute to work by bike. We frequently run errands, go visit friends on our bikes, or plan a day around biking to the market, doing something downtown, and eating. We have a semi-pedestrian lifestyle. Do we do it because we think we're saving the environment? No. We do it because we enjoy it and it’s a healthy lifestyle. If it is better for the environment, bonus.
What frosts me is people who lecture about how everyone else needs to do something about it yet make no contribution themselves to lowering emissions.