The Workermonkey

Friday, October 07, 2005

A message from Senator John McCain 

# posted by Damon @ 10/07/2005 12:43:00 PM

As a member of the Stop Global Warming Virtual March on Washington, I very occasionally receive emails such as the following.

Dear Fellow Marcher,

Recently, a number of my Senate colleagues and I traveled to Canada and Alaska to witness the devastating impacts of global warming on the Arctic. We left even more convinced of what we already knew: global warming is real and it’s not some future phenomenon – it’s here now. The impacts are visible if we just open our eyes to them. Visit my travel log to learn more about the consequences of global warming that are clearly visible today.

Just as in Canada and Alaska, the impacts of global warming in other areas of the country are real and they are happening now. This week, the March is stopping in Buffalo Creek Minnesota. Read more about the impact of global warming on Buffalo Creek.

I’m marching so that we don’t hand our children and grandchildren a world vastly different from the one that we now inhabit. The March is almost halfway through its yearlong virtual tour around the United States. Our voices are amplified by the power of over 130,000 other voices marching together!

Visit http://www.StopGlobalWarming.org to read more about my travels and details about our current stop at Buffalo Creek.

Thank you for the joining the March, and adding your voice to the many speaking out to raise public awareness of the urgent problem of global warming.

Sincerely,

Senator John McCain
Marcher


If you follow the links, look at the pictures from Glacier National Park in Montana. And before you give me that natural cycle theory, think that those pictures span 87 years. It takes thousands of years for the ice age cycles to make noticeable changes. Take a look at that same time period in this graph. You must at least admit there is a correlation, while I will admit that correlation does not mean causation. But given that we knew for decades that certain gases trap the sun's radiation to warm with earth, I cannot fathom how people cannot believe we are causing climate change. Increasing the concentration of an atomospheric gas by 30% in less than 100 years must have some consequence.

The discouraging thing is that the only way for people to live fully sustainably, that is to have no effect whatsoever such that the environment would be unchanged over infinite time, would be for the vast majority of the population to die, and the rest to be nomadic hunter gatherers. Large wind farms slow the air behind them and create little microclimates that change the percipitation in those areas. Hydropower plants prevent the natural flooding and level changes that nourish the banks and pull food into the water. They also heat the water slightly and can reduce dissolved oxygen. While burning biomass does not increase CO2, it does emit NOx.

Sorry to bring this up again, but it's pretty much my job, literally, and I just wanted to pass along Sen. McCains links.

7 comments

You enviro-zealots just dont get it. Take the Bush adminstrations point of view: The ice caps are not melting! America is LIBERATING the water from the ice. We are spreading the word of freedom around the world! (joke courtesy of The Daily Show)

By  Brancibeer, at Friday, October 07, 2005 1:52:00 PM  

Yes overhyping potential issues is a problem. Maybe after our discussion of laywers, we should go after reporters that exaggerate things to make the ADD afflicated, overstimulated population take notice. Anyway, you compare a story about global cooling to the international consensus that lead basically the entire world but us to ratify Kyoto?

I've been a bit annoyed by the typos in the lore too, but never mentioned it.

By  Damon, at Friday, October 07, 2005 2:13:00 PM  

I fixed most of the typos when i had "the power". Some found/ find them endearing... I find them ignorant (ha ha)

By  Brancibeer, at Friday, October 07, 2005 2:27:00 PM  

Ironically I had previously typed a comment about how stopping global warming would not hurt the economy, but decided it was irrelevant to the argument. Well now it's time has come. But first, it is true Kyoto does far too little. You make a good point that we need to do more. Did you look at those glacier photos? How is reducing oil imports that are at record prices going to stifle our economy and expend hundreds of billions of dollars? Why not give Bush a reacharound while your kissing his ass. Our CO2 is mainly from transport so how about this? Ethanol is similar to gasoline and can be burned by several cars already sold today, their drivers generally don't even know. It is grown in America bringing distributed jobs to farmers, processors, shippers, and retailers and keeping those energy costs circulating in the American economy. Although it has a lower energy density than gasoline, it has much higher octane so a turbo can even things out. Ethanol is also much cheaper than gasoline, but it is currently subsdized so its real cost is vague. Its liquid so forgot all that nonsense about the needed hydrogen infrastructure and chick and egg problem.

By  Damon, at Friday, October 07, 2005 4:03:00 PM  

I take it that quote was presented as accurate representation of your opinion. Then I will take your word for it, as I do not know otherwise. Clearly I assumed it was Bush's rhetoric on the cost of reducing emmisions where you got the "stifling our economies and expending hundreds of billions of dollars," since that is the only place I have heard it. You did not say what makes you think that.

And 78 problems higher on this list? Major global problems? What might the criteria for this list be? Well "major" and "global" knocks out the vast majority of issues discussed in America. Power and resources inequalities might be the only other "major global problem" aside from global warming. Surely feel free to make up claims here, since I know you must be tired from having to back things up and use logic in class.

By  Damon, at Saturday, October 08, 2005 6:43:00 AM  

The first two links are the same. The guy is promoting his Copenhagen Consensus group to the Telegraph. The only additional information in the Telegraph is the cost, which he calls the "best guess" pulled from "plenty of literature," but naturally which guess is best is subjective, and he did not reference that analysis. Numbers given without access to the calculations and assumptions are worthless because changing the assumptions in future economics analysis can give you any result you want.

The Copenhagen Consensus' ranking of world issues is based on the following question “What would be the best ways of advancing global welfare, and particularly the welfare of developing countries, supposing that an additional $50 billion of resources were at governments’ disposal?” So their result is only relevent if that is your goal. Pesonally I think that's a rather specific goal, and is not mine. Also, it is obvious that investment in reducing CO2 emissions will not cause visible changes right now. But that's exactly the problem, because greenhouse gases last so long (30 yr for CO2 I think I read but I'm getting lazy here.) So if we wait around to make the investment in the same fiscal year that it will save us (you know typical gov't and corporate thinking) we are going to have some problems. This article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7225653/ says that even if CO2 emissions had already stopped, we would still be looking at an 8 in rise in the sea level. Studies I have read into (not this one) take into account the increase of antartic ice that your NASA article mentions. Though even they do not deny warming, "You can see with this dataset that what is happening in the Antarctic is not what would be expected from a straightforward global warming scenario, but a much more complicated set of events," Parkinson said. Groundbreaking! We don't fully understand the earth and generally oversimply models of it. True. Anyway http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/24.htm says mean rise varies from 13cm to 94cm in 2100. What is that going to cost? If the UCS says we'll save money by 2020 using renewables, and some others say it will be $150b a year (clearly it will go down - but I don't know for how long this is supposed to be) then the reality is that it'll probably cost more at first (like those crippling $4 my parents pay) and eventually, 2030 maybe, get cheaper - but no matter what it cost, it's cheaper than having cities go underwater.

I said you were being dishonest about Bush? "I will take your word for it, as I do not know otherwise."

By  Damon, at Saturday, October 08, 2005 12:54:00 PM  

Ok good, sounds like we're done. I just didn't know why you quoted that article. "Here is someone's opinion." So I was clarifying if it was being presented as your opinion. Anyway seems we've put forth the arguments and the defense and/or prosecution, whoever was who, rests.

Oh yeah and the European Space Agency launched a satelite yesterday to definitively measure ice volume for better modeling of climate change. The two problems are 1. They lost contact with it within hours of launch. 2. Very accurate measurements today are just today's measurements. We cannot calculate rate of change from that. 135 million euro well spent.

By  Damon, at Sunday, October 09, 2005 10:21:00 AM  

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