Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Americans emit 25% of world CO2 emissions but produce 30% world's wealth,...

The Defining fact here is that the US produces a disproportionate fraction of the wealth in the world -- just as miniTAX said.

Interesting you should bring that up, mini. Actually, however, according to the CIA World Factbook 2008, the US produced 21% of the world's GDP-PPP ($13.86 trillion of $65.82T), not 30%. So at 25% of world CO2, we're worse than the world average of GDP versus CO2 production. As maintained.

The CO2 data is similarly subjedct to variation (2) CO2 emissions don't tell the whole GHG story; one should also include methane, a much more potent GHG, and one should also include the net CO2 absorption in growing forests and the like.

ican wrote-

Quote:

If more of the world's population emulated the freedoms in the US, they could join us in more CO2 emissions that would also have little effect on global warming--the earth is currently cooling.

When would peak oil arrive if they all lived as the US does?

...

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

113.

The 300 million people of the US consume 7.7 billion barrels of oil per year.

ican-

Quote:

The 300 million people of the US consume 7.7 billion barrels of oil per year.

So, let's say there's 6 billion taking your advice. If they all consumed at your rate it would come to 154,000,000,000 barrels per year.

Are you still betting on 3000 AD? That would come to 1,540,000,000,000,000 barrels. I think. Assuming no disturbances to the trends.

All that is merely woffle to avoid facing up to the obvious fact that the only trend worth considering is that in the birth rate.

The technical advances you mention are already near perfected and have so little left in them that its counterproductive to try. Unless you get a grant to try from the government but that's only productive for those with the connections.

And I think we are getting too smart, or scared, to take to serious violence on a scale required to affect these figures.

It is a laudable objective you recommended though. And I think we are engaged in a very long process of achieving it. I expect it will be largely accomplished by 3000 AD.

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind the answer is blowin' in the wiiiiiiieeeeeeeend!

Nope. I stick by it. Einstein notwithstanding. And pious hopes.

Putting your hopes in the Holy Grail, something will turn up, merely provides an excuse for not getting started dealing with the real issue. That American baby in the pram is going to consume about 3000 barrels on average. Which is about 100,000 gallons I think.

And about 8,000 will be conceived today. And tomorrow. And the day after.

The posher it is the more it is going to consume.

I want to examine whether the consequences of your solution are a lesser or greater threat.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

114.

Atmospheric scientist Dr. Gerhard Kramm of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "The IPCC would never be awarded by the Nobel Prize in Physics because most of the statements of the IPCC can be assessed as physical misunderstanding and physical misinterpretations," Kramm wrote in a letter to the Associated Press on October 21, 2007. "There is no scientific certainty, even though the Associated Press distributes this message always every day," Kramm wrote in his letter, criticizing the news outlet. "The change in the radiative forcing components since the beginning of the industrial era is so small (2 W/m^2, according to the IPCC 2007) that we have no pyrgeometers (radiometers to measure the infrared radiometer emitted by the earth and the atmosphere) which are able to provide any empirical evidence of such a small change because their degrees of accuracy are too less," he wrote. "By far, most of [the IPCC] members can be considered, indeed, as members of a Church of Global Warming. They are not qualified enough to understand the physics behind the greenhouse effect and to prove the accuracy of global climate models (see, for instance, the poor publication record of Dr. [RK] Pachauri, the current Chairman of the IPCC). However, in science it would be highly awkward to vote which results are correct and which are wrong," he added. "A decrease of the anthropogenic CO2 emission to the values below of those of 1990 would not decrease the atmospheric CO2 concentration. This concentration would increase further, however the increase would be lowering. As illustrated in Slide 38, it might be that the atmospheric CO2 concentration tends to an equilibrium concentration of somewhat higher than 500 ppmv. Here, equilibrium means that the increase of natural and anthropogenic CO2 emission is equaled by the uptake of CO2 by vegetation and ocean," he concluded.

Exxon-Mobil

Admits that they have been consciously funding climate-change denial groups for years, and says that they have decided to cease doing so as they transition to renewable resources in the future.

Suck it, deniers, a major leg of your stool just fell right off...

Cycloptichorn

Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply problem. Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey's estimate, increase our proven domestic oil reserves by approximately 50 percent. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. These energy sources of oil have also been placed off limits by Congress. Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been built. Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be.

Congress' solution to our energy supply problems is not to relax supply restrictions but to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandates that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of a host of corn-related foods, such as corn-fed meat and dairy products. Wheat and soybeans prices have also risen as a result of fewer acres being planted in favor of corn. A Purdue University study found that the ethanol program has cost consumers $15 billion in higher food costs in 2007 and it will be considerably higher in 2008. Higher food prices, as a result of the biofuels industry, have not only affected the U.S. consumer, they have had international consequences as seen in the food riots that have broken out in Egypt, Haiti, Yemen, Bangladesh and other nations.

What's the congressional response? On May 1, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, convened a hearing on rising food prices saying, "The anxiety felt over higher food prices is going to be just as widespread, and will equal or surpass, the anger and frustrations so many Americans have about higher gas prices." Congress' proposed "solutions" to the energy and food mess they've created include a windfall profits tax on oil companies, a gasoline tax holiday for the summer, increases in the food stamp program and foreign food aid. These measures will not solve the problem but will create new problems.

Americans are rightfully angry about higher energy and food prices but their anger should be directed toward the true villains -- the Congress and the White House.
by WALTER E. WILLIAMS PHD

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Exxon-Mobil

Admits that they have been consciously funding climate-change denial groups for years, and says that they have decided to cease doing so as they transition to renewable resources in the future.

Suck it, deniers, a major leg of your stool just fell right off...

Cycloptichorn

That would be true if Exxon-Mobil had any role in affecting or influencing my point of view on AGW or global warming in general. They didn't. Therefore who or what they fund is rather moot on that score.

You, however have misrepresented their current approach to the issue, at least as stated in the article you linked.

The oil companies stand to make huge profits from production of biofuels and other alternate energy sources, so I would imagine it would be in their interest to not knock these emerging industries.