Submitted by Tresler on Wed, 2007-03-28 22:58.
Posting in response to The Mad Pigeon's open topic of the week.
In general I've observed that most people writing about global warming like to focus on one of a few topics, usually the Science, the Economics, or the Politics of the situation. Frequently this results in going back and forth in a debate-style format trying to prove one side or the other on facts and figures.
"X number of scientists have found Y facts so we need to change carbon output."
or
"This is a Liberal scheme that doesn't take practicality into account"
or
"It's all well and good to say we need to change carbon output, but it would wreck the American economy."
The three above are perhaps the most Vanilla examples I could post. The arguments range from the most influential powerpoint presentation ever to people who claim that there is no such thing as Global Warming.
What I don't get is why anybody is so threatened by this phenomenon that they feel they need to speak out against it.
Economically, we would see several things. First, and probably chief on my list of Good Things, would be a boom in employment to help with the conversion of all our cars, power plants, manufacturing, etc over to carbon neutral systems. If we are smart we can keep those jobs in the US.
Second, our dependence on foreign oil would decrease. Again, if we are smart we turn to domestic energy sources to fuel our transportation. We have the capability.
Thirdly, we investigate sustainable power production - solar, wind, water, wave. Sure it costs money to do the conversion, but won't we pat ourselves on the back when 30, 40, 80 years from now, we're still generating power in a FREE (except for maintanence and upgrades) method. Right, NO INPUT COSTS - how is this economically bad?
Politically, ummm, not much would happen that isn't a direct result from economic effects that I can see, and I'm happy to be corrected if someone can think of something.
From that line up, this sounds like something we want to do even if there were no global warming.
What's all the hub-bub, Bub?
Well, the hub-bub is that someone needs to eat the initial conversion costs. The corporations aren't crazy about this as they're standard pattern of 'pass expense along to the customer' couldn't immediately* absorb such a hit. I say immediately, because eventually it could be passed on to the consumers of several generations of automobiles, and price per megawatt-hour increases. It still amounts to a hit to the companies.
Well the companies should have seen this coming. Rudolph Diesel invented the diesel engine as well as a solar engine - over a century ago.
In 1893 he published a paper titled, “Theory and Design of a Rational Thermal Engine to Replace the Steam Engine and the Combustion Engines Known Today,” in which he described an engine that would produce less waste heat and use fuel more efficiently. The German patent office issued Patent No. 67207 for a “Combustion Power Engine,” the machine we know as the diesel engine.
Now, the diesel engine, at that time, ran more efficiently than the internal combustion engine and could run off off domestically produced vegetable oil. So, anyone offering me the, "Oh, we're so surprised and unprepared," argument should know that as off now, anyone in the automotive or power industry has had at least 114 years to clean up their act and play well with the environment and the country. UPDATE: I reference diesel here as just the oldest alternative, there are MANY inexpensive, domestic, clean(er) alternatives other than diesel - it just so happens we have a fleet of diesel trucks though - instant infrastructure)
So, if no one stands to lose but the corporations, and these same corporations clearly have opted to use blatantly non-domestic fuel sources, why are we protecting them?
All that is valid whether Global Warming is happening or not. This (reducing carbon) is all still a Good Idea. Global Warming just makes it an Unavoidable Change.
