How Green can you get?

Stop using coal and fuel to generate our energy and use more modern nuclear (france gets 80+%, Japan, 75+, UK, 75+, US 15% from nuclear. 50% from coal), solar and wind power, put in place REAL infrastructures, such as a working rail system to take trucks off the roads for interstate travel and make mass transit effective AND efficient to take thousands of cars off the roads.

These are the basic steps that will reduce this country's emissions. not me telecommuting, changing all my halogen recessed lights to LEDs and most bulbs for fluorescent. That's a drop in the ocean.

Think about it and demand of this country's politicians that we stop spewing carbon in the air because big oil tells them to.

I've noticed that many of the buildings, shops and stores etc. (commercial, business) leave their lights on at night. Is there a particular reason for it? And would shutting down some/most of the lights and leaving only a few on serve the same purpose? We do the same in our houses instead of leaving all the lights on all the time. If the lights are left on for the cleaners, is it not possible to leave just a few lights on and then have the cleaners turn on rest of the lights as needed when they come in, and turn them off when they leave? I'd think this would also save the owners some money on their electricity bill.

Also, Rocky Mountain Institute ( http://www.rmi.org/ ) probably has many solutions on how to make existing systems much more efficient. After all, it's only recently that we've started switching to CFLs after more than 100 years of using the very inefficient incandescent light bulb that converts only 10% of the energy to light and the rest was wasted as heat. So many of our existing systems were probably designed with the same thinking, and I believe there's scope for improving such systems.

When it comes to politics, Green Party ( http://www.gp.org/ ) has ecological wisdom as one of their ten key values. Seems like we need more of that thinking and maybe we should set a higher bar for candidates who contest elections, and ask more of our elected representatives.

Also, convenience and inconvenience are a function of our habits, so maybe we should take a second look at our habits and start making some changes, both at the individual and institutional levels.

Nuclear is not the way to go. It is subsidized by taxpayer money, and I'd rather have my money invested in renewable energy. Nuclear has many problems with it - waste disposal and proliferation among others. Why leave radioactive waste for future generations? Here's an in-depth analysis of nuclear energy.
( https://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php )

Gee Beth, Why do you only believe Al Gore and the IPCC while ignoring the growing body of evidence that this is all junk science (even the IPCC is beginning to admit it)? The earth has been cooling since 1998 and the correlation between Co2 and temperature has been proved to be weak at best by many climatologists. Just take a look at this graph from the UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SmoothedMonthlyCO2vsTemps.jpg

Many climatologists now believe that it is more likely that we are entering a cooling period instead of a warming one.

Recently NPR published an article entitled "The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat". Apparently the 3000 robotic sensors placed around the world in 2003 show NO warming of the oceans. Do you also ignore interesting evidence like that?

Meanwhile many land based sensors that show an increase in temps have been relocated next to buildings and near blacktop. No wonder they show warming. Check this site for more information: http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Most of the case for man-made global warming is built on a politically motivated movie that distorts (or makes up) the facts and a politically motivated UN panel made up of mostly activists. Meanwhile 18,000 actual climatologists and scientists have declared that the science is seriously flawed. Do you pay any attention to them or is your mind completely closed on this subject?

It appears that for you and many others man-made global warming is religion that can not be questioned. The earth will continue to cool and you will continue to insist that it is warming.

Is a little objectivity and reasonable scepticism too much to ask? How is that normally intelligent people close their minds and block their ears when any contrary evidence is presented?

I'm sure I'll be blasted for even speaking such heracy but I try to keep my mind open on all issues.

Since 1900 think of all the technological advances we have made. Put a man on the moon, computers, tiny batteries that produce so much. Yet for 125 years we have had the internal combustion engine. Something is wrong with this picture.
And what happened to hydroelectric power. It is used but to a very small degree.
Instead of a cupola with a weather vane on my roof, I would rather have a sophisticated wind mill, not the 80' towers you can buy now, but a smaller version that could supply the energy for your home and business. A moving vehicle is motion much like wind. Why can't it move a fan making energy to a generator so that car batteries are always charged. The heck with oil.

Great MIT and the general media's awareness is only about 5 year behind the other industrial nations!

Self Education is the starting point for being a responsible citizen and to make wise decisions. The UN's IPCC has a web site with published scientific information and video recordings of meetings which are discussed in language for the man on the street. IPCC stands for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Lionel #1:
Seriously, can we please stop with the "big oil is the enemy" refrain? It's very tired and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

If the oil companies really exert _that much_ influence over politicians, then how do you explain these companies being prevented by the federal government from expanding their operations anywhere in the U.S.? Can't, can you? So much for the all-powerful oil lobbyist theory.

Do we need to make changes in our energy consumption habits? Absolutely. Does the oil industry exert influence in D.C.? Of course. As to the true extent of their influence, I don't know the answer and I doubt you do, either. I also doubt that it goes as far as you claim it does.

Well that makes sense. Drive your SUV as much as you want, since, hell, if you don't, you might spend the money on charcoal anyway?

bike, walk,, cool down that shower and turn off that light! Oh yeah, go solar.

My previous comment was not published for some reason, so here's the link again, on why nuclear is not a good idea. At all.

https://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php

Dear open-minded Dan: try looking at Hadley Centre data going back more than 10 years. It will become obvious that the 1998 spike was an aberration in otherwise consistently rising global temperatures. If you cut the data off at that spike, it looks like temps are trending downward, when they're actually trending upward. For instance, the 1998-2008 global anomaly temps (as you show) are generally between -0.2 degrees and 0.6, while in the 1980s they were between -0.5 and 0.3, and in the 1970s they were between -0.7 and 0.1. This long-term increase is in fact highly correlated with CO2 concentrations, and this correlation has been tracked back to around 1700.

Some objectivity.

GW

Maybe it's because carbon is a life gas and it makes up a large part of the atmosphere and it's what plants breathe. It's not this evil death poison you make it out to be.

I have a web site called SoundsGreen.com that is looking for people to sign up and share their ideas, experiences, and recommendations. We can all learn from each other, and there are many ideas that have yet to be conjured. For more info or to check it out, please see http://www.soundsgreen.com.

That being said, here's some more food for thought:

1) Remember the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Those pertain to not only material goods, but also to energy consumption.

2) If CO2 is such a problem, and plants convert CO2 to O2 (and more plant material), then why aren't we all planting trees and CO2 consuming vegetation? I am not a plant expert, but I am sure that some plants convert more CO2 than others. We could focus on those.

3) Concentrating on areas of high pollution emissions is key. Once pollutants (whether from a coal burning plant, or from a car accident) are released, the get more and more costly and inefficient to clean as they diffuse.

4) We cannot change the life styles of millions or billions of people, but we can make what they do more efficient. That is why CFLs and LEDs are such a big deal. People can continue being "wasteful", only not as much. Although, changes in habits are still more effective. Perhaps another solution is motion detectors (i.e., lights that turn on and off automatically). Combining solutions is best (i.e., using motion detectors with CFLs, on light switches that we try to remember to turn off - if we forget, the motion detector remembers).

Think about street lights that are always on. Could motion detectors help with them?

Why don't we combine solar farms and wind farms, placing solar panels between windmills.

Every large, flat, building could benefit from solar panels. How about schools and municipal buildings? Garages? Excess electric generation can be sold back to the grid, reducing a need for coal, etc.

That is just a few ideas that I am throwing out there.

It's unfortunate global warming is such a crock and there's no concrete proof it exists, because it would actually be really good for us.
A) A warming planet means shorter winters, meaning we use less foreign oil heating our homes.
B) A warming planet means that more northern lands could sustain crops, meaning more food could be grown and thus world hunger could be alleviated.
C) A warming planet means less reliance on evil winter clothing corporations like LLBean, REI, North Face, etc. Put those evil, selfish, greedy CEOs in their place! They're just positively stomping on the common man as they create their microfiber windbreakers anyway!
D) A warming planet means coastal water temps would increase - cute tropical fish and manatees could expand their range as far north as New Jersey. This could create more green eco-tourism jobs in our struggling mid-Atlantic states!

Oh well, too bad global warming is just a myth dreamt up by politicians who want to exert more control over our lives, money, and property - it really would be a big benefit to us all.

Great Posts Dan and GB!
Glad to know I'm not alone in the opinion that so-called Global Warming (even the term is meaningless) is just the latest eco-trend. Hopefully it will go the way of Earth Day and we can start talking about more urgent problems; famine and disease, endless wars and carnage in Africa, and pitiful public education. We need to push for healthcare that's a right, not a pocketbook privilege, real alternatives to oil and gas power, quality care and respect for our elders, helping more poor people join the middle class, reaching out to create global peace, and setting an example for the world with our humanitarian efforts, instead of our military misadventures. How can you even speak of the dubious theory of global warming at the expense of these real problems that could and should be solved?

There's nothing wrong with reducing pollution, but most of it is caused by all of you SUV drivers. Stupid $100 light bulbs, carbon-neutral energy credits, and calling everything green does very little. If you want less CO2, get rid of your big gas guzzlers.

"Powersave" and "standby" modes on laptop computers and other electronic devices are designed to prevent loss of battery life and can be very useful, however, the devices we use should be turned off completely when they're not in use for extended periods of time. This prevents the slow but steady drain on power sources that is entirely preventable. Here's a useful analogy: Imagine cars that are left idling when not in use. From time to time, leaving a car idling can save fuel due to the additional cost of turning over (starting) the engine. Over long periods of time, leaving cars running would burn an awful lot of fuel for no purpose. Turn those computers off at night and you'll see the difference on your electric bills.