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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26020 Posts |
 Posted - 04/09/2007 : 07:44:21 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
1. Get rid of all your incandescent lightbulbs and replace them with compact florescent bulbs. They are more expensive to buy, but they are far more efficient in their use of energy and they last as long as 10 incandescent bulbs, so they are actually cheaper in the long run, by far. I have compact florescent bulbs that are over 7 years old, and still running. In the last 7 years I think I have replaced only 2. There is no reason not to make the switch, except for some odd sized bulbs that you might not be able to find compact florescent equivilents. LED bulbs are also a good alternative, but are not as widely available as the compact florescent are.
Please note that compact flourescent bulbs contain mercury, and so require recycling or special disposal, which is hard to find. For example, I've heard that there's only one facility in all of California equipped to handle CF bulbs. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 08:24:56 [Permalink]
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quote:
filthy:
Currently there are damned few polititions willing to try and put those infrastructure in place. However, when the
Big Sweat arrives, they will solve the problem by the usual blame-shuffling, SOP. By then, will it be too late?
I rather suspect so....
I guess I'm a bit more optimistic than that. Some Republicans seem to be coming around on Global Warming. And yet there is this:
Why Republicans are Skeptical about Global Warming
quote:
How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It's certainly true that many of them are. Leading global warming skeptic Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), for instance... The bottom line is that his relationship to the energy industry is as puppet relates to hand.
But the financial relationship doesn't quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.
The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement.
Your typical conservative has little interest in the issue. Of course, neither does the average nonconservative. But we nonconservatives tend to defer to mainstream scientific wisdom. Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.
National Review magazine, with its popular website, is a perfect example. It has a blog dedicated to casting doubt on global warming, or solutions to global warming, or anybody who advocates a solution. Its title is "Planet Gore." The psychology at work here is pretty clear: Your average conservative may not know anything about climate science, but conservatives do know they hate Al Gore. So, hold up Gore as a hate figure and conservatives will let that dictate their thinking on the issue.
Meanwhile, Republicans who do believe in global warming get shunted aside. ...Gannett News Service recently reported that Rep. Wayne Gilchrest asked to be on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio refused to allow it unless Gilchrest would say that humans have not contributed to global warming. The Maryland Republican refused and was denied a seat.
Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), both research scientists, also were denied seats on the committee. Normally, relevant expertise would be considered an advantage. In this case, it was a disqualification; if the GOP allowed Republican researchers who accept the scientific consensus to sit on a global warming panel, it would kill the party's strategy of making global warming seem to be the pet obsession of Democrats and Hollywood lefties.
The phenomenon here is that a tiny number of influential conservative figures set the party line; dissenters are marginalized, and the rank and file go along with it. No doubt something like this happens on the Democratic side pretty often too. It's just rare to find the phenomenon occurring in such a blatant way.
The reason I am optimistic is that I think the republicans are ultimately shooting themselves in the foot with this one. (Something they have become quite adept at lately.) As more and more data is reviewed and hits the news, the worse those deniers who set the agenda for tha |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Rubicon95
Skeptic Friend
USA
220 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 10:18:21 [Permalink]
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I think the jury is still out on MMGW. I do think the planet is warming up. Climate is never static. (The mini ice age from 1300-1600 etc) Every 20 years we go through some cooling and warming periods. During the 70's there was the speculation by the scientific community that we were headed to a new ice age.
Newsweek ran article on that in the 70's. Now it's a different tune http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/
MMGW will probably be a new commercial racket. Al Gore's refusal to take the pledge during the congressional hearings was telling. His buying the carbon offset seems akin to the practices in the American Civil War of buying your way out of the draft. The rich will benefit and the poor will pay. They the rich should set an example.
That being said.
MMGW aside, There is no reason NOT to use energy more efficiently and enviromentally safe. I don't need a lispy ex-non-president to tell me "the planet's got a fever". I prefer George Carlin's, "The Planet's fine, its the people who are F#@%ed."
I don't have do any research to act in a way to leave the place in a better shape for the next generation. It's just freakin common sense.
In good ole days of Disco,3 Dog Night and ABBA, there was a push for conservation, and alternative fuels. Bring them back....The messages (not disco) and get rid of the carbon taxes / indulgences
I'll go back to lurking now.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 04/09/2007 : 12:05:29 [Permalink]
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quote:
MMGW will probably be a new commercial racket. Al Gore's refusal to take the pledge during the congressional hearings was telling. His buying the carbon offset seems akin to the practices in the American Civil War of buying your way out of the draft. The rich will benefit and the poor will pay. They the rich should set an example.
What is this? I assume that you mean "oath" rather than "pledge," but I've heard nothing about any refusal to take it other than Bush and the swine Cheney at the 9-11 committee. And what difference does it make, anyway? Every thing he said can be rigorously researched by anyone interested. I've heard lots of complaints, but no one has made any sort of a scientific case against him.
That was an interesting read, Kil, and it looks all too true. Some of the spavined leaders inflicted upon us will still be denying it even when the well's gone dry. James Inhofe, for example.
Me, I'm not optimistic at all. Unless some sort of political consensus is agreed upon and action taken, all of the science and even the rhetoric will have been in vain. Our government, with either party in power, has a nasty habit of locking the barn after the horse has run off. The difference between the parties is that the Republicans have lost the lock as well, and wouldn't be able to find the key even if they hadn't.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 13:00:44 [Permalink]
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The groups with the financial interests in ignoring GW have been so effective promoting MMGW as false, the effects of that campaign of false information will last a long time.
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 13:12:28 [Permalink]
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I think your political analysis was dead on, Kil.
And Rubicon, though you don't agree with MMGW, I applaud your agreement that taking steps designed to work against it are at worst harmless, and at best work to reduce pollution and conserve resources.
(Has anyone else noticed that part of the pro-MMGW position is superficially similar to Pascal's Wager? To paraphrase Pascal: "Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that MMGW is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that MMGW is.")
Filthy, whether we will head off MMGW all comes down to some imponderables. Can the will to change behavior begin to work internationally on a large scale, soon? And will nature react by a slowing of GW, or have we exceed some boundary and entered a vicious cycle of ice melt causing more solar heating, which causes more ice melt? And there are other tipping points to worry about, such as the methane on the ocean bottoms, which may begin a similar uncontrolled cycle.
All we can do is to begin to reverse the human input that has led to this situation, and hope for the best.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 04/09/2007 13:20:41 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 13:31:46 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Rubicon95
MMGW will probably be a new commercial racket. Al Gore's refusal to take the pledge during the congressional hearings was telling. His buying the carbon offset seems akin to the practices in the American Civil War of buying your way out of the draft. The rich will benefit and the poor will pay. They the rich should set an example.
The problem is that it's not in the "best interest" of the rich to set an example. The rich have cash... They can afford to move from the costal cities when they get flooded. They can afford to buy the food when the food price sky-rocket. More than half of the people of Bangladesh loose their land and livelyhood, and there's jack shit they can do about it.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Rubicon95
Skeptic Friend
USA
220 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 14:53:28 [Permalink]
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Sorry back again.
Filthy, Gore is being hypocritcal and it dilutes the damn message.
DC infuriated me when he made a statement to the effect of conservation is not a national concern but a personal issue. (yet personal issues are national concerns....go figure)
Conservation is the key. Take only what you need and no more.
As far as Al Gore InConvenient Truth..Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. It makes him money so fat swine can pay for his carbon offsets (What a rip off!! Like buying indulgences for your sins) Meanwhile the average Joe will have to severly change is lifestyle. Heck I can't affort retrofitting my Saturn to use E85. Yet the rich live it up.
Why are people amazed that politics is watering down MMGW. MMGW is politics to tear down Bush. He is the boogey man. The whole MMGW is going to go away once Democrats gain the White House. Once he is gone this inconvenient truth will conveniently disappear.
Sorry I am ranting. But I remember the ecological disasters of the Love Canal, Three Mile, Bophal...Oh the rage, the concern, the fingerpointing...then silence. NEXT issue for our goldfish brains.
So forgive me folks if I am jaded by the hype and craze of MMGW. Been there heard that....cricket sounds.
See James Burke's After the Warming. I remember when that came out. That should be shown again.
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 15:53:23 [Permalink]
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Rubicon wrote: quote:
Sorry I am ranting. But I remember the ecological disasters of the Love Canal, Three Mile, Bophal...Oh the rage, the concern, the fingerpointing...then silence. NEXT issue for our goldfish brains.
The boy who cried wolf was eventually eaten by the wolf because nobody believed his cries for help any longer. But those final cries for help were real. My question is this: is your skepticism on this issue based only on a pattern with similar past issues, or is it based on actually looking at the details of this particular issue? Because personally, I've looked at the science, and I find it alarming. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 18:50:15 [Permalink]
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Rubicon95 said:
quote:
As far as Al Gore InConvenient Truth..Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. It makes him money so fat swine can pay for his carbon offsets (What a rip off!! Like buying indulgences for your sins) Meanwhile the average Joe will have to severly change is lifestyle. Heck I can't affort retrofitting my Saturn to use E85. Yet the rich live it up.
(emphasis mine)
Don't buy the bullshit from your conservative mags and blogs. Engage your brain and filter this kind of distraction out.
It is a complete fabrication that average people will be adversely effected by energy conservation, or that average people will have to make significant lifestyle alterations in order to conserve.
You don't have to convert your car to E85, but rather when you are looking to buy a new one, buy an E85 or hybrid car.
If you did half the things I listed you can significantly reduce your personal carbon footprint and not even remotely be adversely effected.
Other stuff you can do is to plant some trees in your yard, shop at your local farmers market instead of the grocery store(you get seasonal stuff rather than buying stuff shipped in), etc.
Seriously, if 25% of the US just did 3 or 4 things I have listed, we'd reduce our emmisions of CO2 by quite a bit.
quote:
I think the jury is still out on MMGW.
As has been said many times in skeptic forums all over the internet.... you are not entitled to your own facts. The facts of global warming indicate with very high certainty that the human contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is contributing to the warming of the globe. There is wide scientific concensus to support this conclusion.
Conservative publications would have you believe that there is real doubt as to the idea of global warming, say nothing of human caused warming. They are unrelaible, they have a political and financial agenda which calls for the creation of doubt in the public perception of global warming.
See, the people who are going to be adversely effected by measures to curb and reduce CO2 emmissions are not you and I, but oil and power companies who rely on the burning of nonrenewable fossil fuels.
Ohh... I just thought of another thing you can do.
If you own your own home (or have some equity), and you can refi or get an equity loan, and you live in a place where you can do this... Have solar panels installed on your roof and put in 2 or 3 small wind turbines. 1 wind turbine of the appropriate size can power a home in 5mph winds. Install three (because the initial expense includes the hardware to hook the turbine to your house and local power grid) and you can sell the excess power back to the power company! This isn't a cheap idea, but you can probably get a 10Kw turbine and tower for $50K.
I dunno what a solar panel package would cost, but I know GE offers a full package deal, everything from the panels to hooking into the grid. It is probably customized, so the price depends on how much power you want out of it.
Dave_W said:
quote:
Please note that compact flourescent bulbs contain mercury, and so require recycling or special disposal, which is hard to find. For example, I've heard that there's only one facility in all of California equipped to handle CF bulbs.
Yeah, they should be disposed of properly.
But they last so long you will only rarely have to dispose of them. I have the two burned out bulbs of mine sitting in a closet, haven't bothered to look to see where I should (or if I can yet) take them for disposal. At this rate though it will be a decade before I have enough to make a trip to a disposal facility worthwhile. I can handle 15 or 20 dead CF bulbs sitting in my closet in a small garbage can. So this isn't a major concern just yet.
The energy savings from using them is well worth me having to hold onto the dead ones for a while.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 18:54:47 [Permalink]
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rubicon95 said:
quote:
Why are people amazed that politics is watering down MMGW. MMGW is politics to tear down Bush. He is the boogey man. The whole MMGW is going to go away once Democrats gain the White House. Once he is gone this inconvenient truth will conveniently disappear.
That is, quite possibly, the least sane thing I have ever heard.
I have a difficult time believing that anyone could actually believe such a statement.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 19:04:50 [Permalink]
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In response to rubicon:
Dude wrote: quote:
It is a complete fabrication that average people will be adversely effected by energy conservation, or that average people will have to make significant lifestyle alterations in order to conserve.
I gotta totally agree with this. The more money people make, the more they have to change their lifestyle in order to conserve. If you are poor or working class, you have to do a lot less because you already have a much smaller carbon footprint.
I'll use a friend of mine as an example. She is pretty damn poor. She lives in a room in a warehouse - very modest living quarters. It is so expensive to heat the wearhouse that she slept with mittens and layers of clothing on all winter - so no contributing to the overuse of energy for heat. She can't afford to buy a car and pay for its insurance and maintence, so the only time she ever drives is when she uses the Philly car share to go grocery shopping - again, very energy efficient and saves lots of gas.
I, on the other hand, have to really think about how I could conserve a little more on a daily basis with tons of things I do, from remembering to turn off the lights in all the rooms in my house when I'm not using them, to deciding whether I should walk to the grocery store three time this week or drive once. When it comes time to replace my car, I want to get a hybrid, so I keep hoping that I'll be able to get an affordable and decent one. My choices are limited by my ethics about conservation. But my friend doesn't even have those choices because she's so limited by her income.
People who don't have much money can't afford the truly wasteful things. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 04/09/2007 19:07:54 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 19:30:41 [Permalink]
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As seen on Homer Simpson's T-shirt (while traveling abroad):
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 19:57:16 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by marfknox
...The more money people make, the more they have to change their lifestyle in order to conserve. If you are poor or working class, you have to do a lot less because you already have a much smaller carbon footprint.....My choices are limited by my ethics about conservation. But my friend doesn't even have those choices because she's so limited by her income.
People who don't have much money can't afford the truly wasteful things.
Relative poverty and wealth depend on where you begin measuring. If you just compare yourself to the people nearby or in your country you might be on the lower end. But if you broaden the picture to the world, very few people in the USA are truly poor. I watched this Independent Lens program last night on PBS, China Blues about workers in a Chinese blue jeans factory. It was quite an eye opener. For all the hypocritical Al Gore's we see, there is someone else in the world that could look at each of us the same way.
Of course there is also the two edged sword. If all the billions of poverty level workers in the world had more affluence, would they contribute to global warming? Could the planet afford it? How do we use less to make things more equitable? There's a lot of talk about some people in China having more affluence and what an issue that is with the size of their population. But if you look at responsibility for total emissions over time, it'll be a while before China catches up the the amount of green house gases the industrialized West has already pumped into the air. Do you hold China to the standard for the day or do you hold everyone to the standard over the last century?
It's hard to give up what you are accustomed to. It's hard to decide to buy a new car when you weren't ready to. I'm thinking about installing some solar panels on my roof. I'd love to have those and a windmill. But either is a very expensive initial outlay.
I should get a more efficient car. I'm not sure however, if the hybrids really get that much better mileage. I need to do more research. Considering the CO2, what do you guys think. Is it really a lot less or are they over-hyping what the hybrids can do? Guess I should read a bit more.
Yes this post is rambling a bit. It isn't your imagination.
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| Edited by - beskeptigal on 04/09/2007 20:07:42 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/09/2007 : 23:24:46 [Permalink]
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The 2007 Toyota Prius has a combined city/highway gas milage of 55 miles per gallon.
It probably runs more on the gas engine in town, with frequent stops and starts, and more on the electric on the highway. So the highway milage is probably better than 55, and the in town worse, by something like 10-15 miles per gallon (just a guess).
Any way you look at the hybrids, they are an improvement over standard gas-only vehicles, with regard to fuel efficiency.
I'd like to see an E85/hybrid combo personally.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Political hacks water down global warming report
