Ten Recommendations to deal with global warming
Sam Carana
global warming. Here are ten things politians can do now to make a
difference:
1. Tax energy supply that adds extra heat to global warming and use
the money to subsidize energy supply that doesn't.
2. Stop supporting conventional power plants. Don't give them research
grants or subsidies. Don't give them regulatory privileges or allow
them to monopolize a market. If they go broke under the new regime of
taxes, then good riddance. Instead, support renewables such as wind
farms, solar power, hydro-electricity and wave power.
3. Sign the Kyoto Treaty and make a firm commitment to reduce
emissions by a lot more. Work on a new global Treaty beyond Kyoto,
using these ten points as a basis.
4. Support lifestyles that are more environmentally-friendly.
Encourage use of the Internet as an alternative to travel and
commuting. Encourage homeschooling and working from home. Deregulate
taxi services.
5. Ban incandescent light bulbs. Set a date for a national ban.
Actively promote a global ban.
6. Support energy that doesn't add extra heat more actively in
regulations and government policy. Encourage competition and diversity
among suppliers of such energy. Encourage interconnection and overlap
of electricity grids, so that households can choose which grid to sell
electricity to, if they generate a surplus in their backyard.
7. Plan communities without roads and with footpaths and bikepaths
instead. Plan houses close together, around a local center of shops
and restaurants. Redesign existing cities so that people have to
travel less.
8. Tax the sale of meat and use the money to support vegetarian
restaurants, bicycle shops and other environmentally-friendly outlets
in communities without roads.
9. Make government act more environmentally responsible. Ask for
ideas. Have more staff work from home. Look at ways to offer services
over the phone, over the Net, etc.
10. Disclosure. Make that government departments and large companies
publicly disclose their emissions of greenhouse gases. Make products
display on their packaging the amounts of greenhouse gases needed to
produce it.
Cheers!
Sam Carana
Georges Metanomski
Global Warming (GW), changed the battery of his
bike's lamp, which he considered polluting, to a
dynamo. "More effort" he says, "but my conscience
is quiet. I did my part and if all did the same,
we would stop and reverse the GW".
Would we indeed? Seems somehow thin.
Sam's "Recommendations" would have about the same
effect, i.e. tranquilize Sam's conscience without
any impact on GW. He seems full of good will, but
it's the sort of good will paving roads to hell.
Let's first ask, what has GW to do with Epistemology.
It's doubtless a most important problem one of the
critical for mankind's survival, but it concerns
physics, sociology, economy and politics. Actually,
it became entirely confined in politics which
discovered its panic generating quality.
Now, panic is the strongest lever in political
campaigns. We saw it at work, triggering the Iraq war.
Now, I'm not arguing for, nor against Iraq war,
it would not be pertinent to Epistemology,
but just stress the role of panic in politics.
Generating it slickly and astutely with help of GW,
some Gore or Clinton may be elected. With what
impact on the GW and its sequels? Rigorously, NONE.
They don't care a damn about it else then as the
political lever and even if they cared, what, if
anything, could they do?
Now, that's where Epistemology could be of avail. It
deals with consistent formulation of problems and with
their processing following rigorous inference.
Let's see what could we do in this direction at the
state of the art of our knowledge, competence and
skills.
First, we shall state that the problem is much too
complex to hope for a decisive formulation, let
alone for solutions, in this first, timid trial. We
have to hope for a reasonable debate, bringing new
ideas as successive approximations. It would be first
time that such thing would happen in this list, but
nothing is impossible, so we don't lose hope and pass
to our trial to formulate the GW.
GW has two kinds of causes: human and natural.
Starting
with natural, we observe that GW happened several
times
in history as one of two phases of a more general
cyclic structure GW/GF (Global Freezing).
As it's easier to explicate separately GW and GF,
we shall start by it before moving to their
more complex cyclic reversion and succession.
Earth surface encompasses white ice areas reflecting
heat radiated by the sun and other dark ones absorbing
it. In a steady state of ice/not-ice distribution and
constant amount of radiated heat, the ratio of
absorption/reflection stays constant and the
climate does not change.
Yet, the smallest distortion may change this
equilibrium.
Let's suppose that one year the sun emits more heat
and then returns to the constant yearly amount.
The triggering change warms up the earth more than
usually, so that more ice melts. Then, next year less
heat is reflected and more absorbed, so that still
more ice melts and we enter the progressive,
accelerating GW phase. Nothing seems to stay in the
way of earth losing all its ice and becoming a Sahara
interspaced with hot seas. Yet, history shows, that
GW was succeeded by GF, in turn by GW, etc.
Which mechanism may rewerse GW into GF and vice versa?
There must be several, but I can think only of one,
albeit sufficient to account for the cyclicity,
viz the salt.
Oceans are salted and salt waters freeze at lower
temperature than the sweet. Snows and ice melting
copiously during the GW flood oceans with sweet water
decreasing their salinity and increasing their
freezing
temperature, so that over a threshold they start to
freeze again over larger surfaces and the phase moves
to GF and towards a new glacial period.
Pseudo-scientific committees commanded by politicians,
decided that GW is "due" with 80% certainty to human
causes, implying that it may be reversed by human
action.
Double lie:
1."Due" should be replaced with "triggered". It's
quite
possible that greenhouse triggered GW, as any small
distortion could disarrange the fragile equilibrium.
Hpwever, once triggered and entered in the ice melting
phase, it's DUE to ice melting.
2.Once in the ice melting phase, the triggering action
did its job and is of little, if any avail. Even if we
stop all emissions, ice will continue to melt and GW
to progress.
Which actions seem advisable in this light?
1.Dissociate GW from greenhouse, admit that it is
inevitable and start immediately to plan actions
aiming at saving millions endangered by inundations
(expatriation, artificial islands, etc.) and other
sequels of the GW.
2.In order to finance these actions, stop suspending
fraudulent and useless phantasms such as intermittent
energy sources (photo-voltaic and mainly the wind
mafia
steeling and sharing with corrupted politicians heavy
billions of the tax payers.)
Dissociate pollution from GW. Pollution is a critical
problem in itself and should be treated as such, but
separately from GW. And we should discuss it in a
separate thread.
Georges
____________________________________________________________________________________
It's here! Your new message!
Get new email alerts with the free Yahoo! Toolbar.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/
Sam Carana
Let me elaborate a bit more on the above points.
The principle stated in point 1. is: Tax heavy polluters most and give
that money to supply that doesn't add extra heat. It's a market-
oriented solution in the sense that it leaves it to a large extent up
to the market to choose what to do, as opposed to government
regulation, prohibition, nationalisation and subsidising political
friends. By taxing polluters and giving that money to supply that
doesn't add extra heat, it works both ways and becomes doubly
effective, minimising risks that the money is spent on the wrong
purposes. Since we're talking about investments that span over
decades, there should be bi-partisan support to firmly stick to this
principle, without making compromises to advance one ideology or
another or to assist political friends. All sides in politics should
accept this as an emergency plan, to be given as much (or more)
urgency as was given to the war in Iraq.
Point 2. argues NOT to give coal-fired plants tax deductions or
shelters, subsidies or credits for promises to change their way and to
conduct research, say, into capture and sequestration, since this just
compromises the principle under point 1. What if these promises turn
out to be just a smokescreen? What if at best they can only partly
reduce emissions, while it takes a lot of extra energy to capture
carbon, transport it and put it into the soil, with questions
remaining as to leakage and safety? Why not give that money instead to
people who install solar panels and wind turbines in their backyards
to generate electricity and perhaps put a surplus back into the power
grid, without adding any extra heat?
That brings us to point 6, which does indeed advocate net metering to
go both ways. It's also about having more dynamic, market-oriented
networks that do NOT focus on building power plants, but instead focus
on buying energy from a market of suppliers and transporting it to
customers, preferably in competition with other networks. Where
networks are monopolies, they should be structurally separated from
energy suppliers (especially from coal-fired power plants).
On point 8, Tax on sales of meat. One can of course have ethical
objections against eating meat. A second argument is that it takes a
lot of fertile land to put meat on the table. Global warming threatens
supply of food, while using more land for bio-fuel will only increase
prices for food. A third argument to tax meat is that animals release
methane, a gas that's twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas
than carbon-dioxide.
As discussed earlier, if such taxes are merely used to help the poor
pay higher prices, then little will be achieved for the environment.
Instead, such taxes should be used to support environmentally-friendly
developments, such as communities without roads, as suggested under
point 7. We should start building such communities without roads on
university campuses, designing small houses for staff and students to
live around shops and restaurants. Small houses need less heating and
air-conditioning. If we leave out roads, garages and other car-parking
spaces, they can be built closely together, so anyone can easily walk
or bike their way around. That would be more healthy as well!
Cheers!
Sam Carana
Sam Carana
The facts speak for themselves, Georges, temperatures are rising, the
past decade has been the warmest on many records and carbon in the
atmosphere has rarely risen faster in history. Why belittle the human
factor in global warming, in the face of catastrophic threats? Even if
all we could do was make just a little difference, then that's still
no argument not to make that difference. On the other hand, we have a
lot to gain and to lose if what we do now will make a lot of
difference.
So, what actions seem advisable in this light?
1. Yes, we should plan for migration away from areas most affected. We
should design new cities at safe locations and we should design them
in ways to minimise adding extra heat.
2. We should expose false arguments against action. It makes sense to
tax the heaviest polluters most and to give that money to energy
supply that doesn't add extra heat. If a household has a surplus of
wind or solar power, then it makes sense to feed such a surplus back
into the electricity grid. Solar power is generated during the day,
when there's more demand for electricity than at night. Wind turbines
can keep turning at night, thus avoiding lack of supply. Power grids
should be dynamic, interconnected and compete with each other, to
ensure that the available energy is used most efficiently.
Furthermore, a surplus can also be stored, e.g. by pumping water back
up behind the dam of a hydro-electric plant or by making hydrogen.
Hydrogen could be kept and stored at homes or be sold at petrol
stations to run cars. The suggestion that solar and wind energy was
intermittent is just a line that's fed by those who benefit
financially from keeping conventional power plants running.
Finally, and I don't know whether you meant that as a third action
point, Georges, you suggest not to regard greenhouse gasses as
pollution. Well, the US Supreme Court has just ruled that greenhouse
gases are a form of pollution. It's hard to appeal to the Supreme
Court, so if you disagree, then you'll have to change the law, George.
In that case, you'll have to come up with convincing arguments to find
political backing and, so far, I haven't seen any convincing
arguments, Georges.
Epistemology is not so much about knowledge, it's not so much about
science, it's first of all debate, it's about making points, coming up
with arguments that make sense, refuting counter-arguments, etc. If
anything, epistemology is an effort to make sense and anyone can have
a shot at it, but it's imperative to make sense. If we stopped making
sense, there would be no epistemology!
Cheers!
Sam Carana
Georges Metanomski
Sam:
Epistemology is not so much about knowledge, it's not
so much about science, it's first of all debate, it's
about making points, coming up with arguments that
make
sense, refuting counter-arguments, etc.
If anything, epistemology is an effort to make sense
and anyone can have a shot at it, but it's imperative
to make sense. If we stopped making sense, there would
be no epistemology!
G:
Golden words. While I don't quite get why
epistemology,
coming from episteme (knowledge or science) and
"logos"
(explanation) and clearly meaning "Theory of
Knowledge",
should not "be about" knowledge, I take all you say
about debate. Argumentation and counter-argumentation
is indeed its essence. And we will certainly agree
that
in order to counter-argument with sense one should
start by considering the arguments one wish to counter
and by never making the other fellow say what he did
not.
Let's see, how you apply your precepts in practice.
======================================================
S:
The facts speak for themselves, Georges, temperatures
======================================================
G:
Well, so I was saying and called it Global Warming
(GW),
so why this parrot-like echo?
======================================================
S:
Why belittle the human factor in global warming, in
the
face of catastrophic threats? Even if all we could do
was make just a little difference, then that's still
no argument not to make that difference.
G:
You did not read my post. I said that human factor
triggered GW, which is far from belittling it and
then I totally nixed it as reversible, saying that
even if we not only stopped polluting, but somehow
got rid of all hanging greenhouse gases, it would not
stop GW, which, once started, rides happily on melting
ice towards maximum heat and, eventually, in some
1000 years towards new cooling and freezing phase.
I asserted, rightly or wrongly that facing the melting
phase our eventual actions are negligible and cannot
make any difference at all.
So, following your own percept you should accept or
counter my "melting" argument and not prattle about
"little differences".
======================================================
S:
It makes sense to tax the heaviest polluters most ...
======================================================
G:
Again NTP, you did not read me. I said:
"Dissociate pollution from GW. Pollution is a critical
problem in itself and should be treated as such, but
separately from GW. And we should discuss it in a
separate thread".
Right or wrong, you should have positively, or
negatively acknowledged it and not prattle about
pollution as if I never said anything. It's not only
senseless, but hardly polite.
======================================================
S:
... Georges, you suggest not to regard greenhouse
gasses as pollution...
======================================================
G:
Where the hell do I suggest it? Learn to read.
I bloody well consider greenhouse as pollution and
pollution as a critical problem, only having little
if any, impact on GW, which got enough inertia to
go on by itself.
As to LAW, we know laws against moving Earth, for
burning witches, for killing sinning wives, etc.
Laws embody more injustice and stupidity than
anything else.
I said that your corrupt law was based upon a double
lie and, instead of discussing, you throw it on me
as a dogmatic truth. It is, indeed, ... but I let
you find the qualifier yourself.
Either we move to some reasonable conversation, or
we better leave it at that.
Georges.
======================================================
____________________________________________________________________________________
Need Mail bonding?
Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091