Bush Says Yes To Global Warming

[Dis]

I already have a thread discussing global warming

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Asher
You don't live in Canada!

Go back to California.

[Caligastia]

What do you expect him to do about it? Reduce his emissions? Tell Laura to stop feeding him curry then.

[Dis]

news flash

global warming cannot be stopped except maybe by moving into the dark ages .

improving gas mileage won't do sh!t. we would need to get rid of all automobiles. and electric ones won't work very well either! since power plants have emissions (depending on the type of course)

[- Groucho -]

What, do you work for Ford? It's a no-brainer that improving gas mileage will decrease CO2 emissions. Will it make the problem go away? No, but it will lessen the problem. If you wait for the magic bullet you'll end up choking on your own effluent.

[Dis]

ahh but the population increases putting more cars on the road. meanwhile developing nations increase the # of cars, and put up new powerplants.

you get the jist.

Our only hope is to develop fuel cells with near 0 emissions. The technology is there, but the price is too expensive.

And the goverment will never "force" the public to buy these things. So we have a slight dilemma don't we?

[- Groucho -]

And until then we just wallow around in the crap spewed out of those single passenger SUVs on the roads?

[Dis]

yes

no one is taking my truck away from me

[Ned]

The solution is obvious folks: Everyone that signs Kyoto must make up for those who don't.

[zwelgje]

Does Bush finally get it then, he's so stupid I'm telling ya! Can't believe so many moron americans voted for him......

[Dis]

hey I voted for him.

Do you really believe Gore would be a better president? There is no f*cking way. Bush is an idiot, and I hate John Ashcroft. But he is still better than Gore.

Do you really think Gore would have taken down Afghanistan? No he wouldn't have. He would have done the same as Clinton. A few badly placed cruise missles would magically eradicate the terrorist threat.

[zwelgje]

FYI, I don't think Clinton placed the cruise missiles. The army did who are now also active in Afghanistan. Gore would have done a better job I'm sure, he's more a diplomat than Bush. Bush can't communicate with other countries.

[Velociryx]

Sadly no....choosing a president this past election truly was a situation of choosing the lesser of two evils...*sigh* It used to be the case that some really talented, qualified people would run for office...now, it seems like we get the (comment removed to get around the auto-censor).

"The Shrub" is an idiot (which is why the nickname stuck in the first place). He's got some great handlers--and even they have a tough time keeping his idiocy from showing once in a while, witness the "Are there any blacks in Brazil" and the "Axis of Evil" comments, to name but two), but by and large, this guy, like the other candidates in the previous election, is simply NOT presidential material.

Worse, this particular idiot has absolutely zero concern for larger issues like the environment, or doing anything substantive to improve the looming healthcare crisis in this country...nahhh, he'd rather run up the debt to new record highs, pay back his rich-boy buddies who financed his campaign, and let his handlers suck up a few more citizens' rights and put an increasing amount of power into the federal government's hands.

Way to go Shrub!

-=Vel=-
(who fervently hopes that in the NEXT presidential election, we'll have some candidates who are at least the equals of their Washington handlers)

[el freako]

It is a common misconception that higher automobile usage (and lower fuel efficency) is the major cause of the higher US CO2 emissions - and that therefore the US needs to curb these 'freedoms' in order to do something.

However a close look at the statisics of CO2 production shows that this is not the case.

Road transport in the US contributes 25% toward's it's total CO2 production - if this was the major cause of the difference in CO2 emissions vis-a-vis the EU you would expect a far smaller proportion of the EU's emissions to come from road transport.
However the figure for the EU is 24%, a negligable difference.

A far bigger difference shows up in the fuels used to generate power - 37% of the US's CO2 comes from burning coal, compared with 27% in the EU.
Now it can be claimed that the EU achieves this by greater useage of nuclear power than the US (the EU get's 16% of it's energy from nuclear power compared with 8% in the US).
Again, however, this does not stand up to detailed anaysis - if the EU cut it's share of energy production to the US level of 8% and made up for it by burning more coal (which produces the most amount of CO2 per unit of energy) it would only close a quarter of the gap between the US and EU.


(source: 'OECD in figures' pp 50-51)

Therefore it can be inferred that the real 'cost' to the US in reducing CO2 emissions (at least over the period that Kyoto covered) would be in reducing subsisdies that encourage internationally uneconomic coal mines in places like west virginia.

Most american's balk at the thought that to combat global warming when they think that they would have to give up their 'freedom to drive' - but I wonder how many would still be against it if the cost would be bourne by subsidised coalminers and that they could very well see a fall in their electricity bills!

That most american's don't seem to realize this is a tribute to short-sighted polititians muddying the waters.

[CyberGnu]

El freako, you are confusing 'detailed analysis' with 'statistics'.

And interpreting statistics is a science of its own...

I don't have the time to go through all your numbers, so let's just take the first one about car emissons.

Just looking at the percentages doesn't tell you anything about how fuel efficient cars are, period. I tried to figure out a way it would be relevant, but just couldn't.

What you should be looking at is total emissions per capita and/or total emissions per GNP. By doing so, one quickly affirms that the EU is a lot more fuel efficient in ALL aspects, ranging from transportation to heating to industrial production. Of course, if the EU is more efficient everywhere, the percentages will still stay the same...