Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Greg in FL
Published Letters: 91 Editor's Choice: 18
...to a decision maker, whether in business, government, academia, whaterver, is often in the form "how could you be so stupid?" Consequently, few people (in this case reporters and editors) choose voluntarily to associate with such advisors.
(1) Al Gore is right that there is scientific unanimity on anthropogenic global warming if you take peer-reviewed publications as the relevant figure of merit.
(2) The ice core data from Greenland and Antarctica provide the crucial differentiation between naturally occurring climate cycles and the effects of humans in the most recent 200 years. The data
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/283/5408/1712
show that carbon dioxide and methane increases lag temperature increases by 600-1000 years in each of the natural cycles, whereas in the last 200 years, the carbon dioxide has increased to levels unprecedented for the past half-million years, and temperature increases have followed; the CO2 leads temperature now. This is easy to understand: in the long natural cooling cycles, carbon is stored in peat underground and in methane hydrates underwater. When temperatures rise due to earth orbital orientation changes, these reserves of carbon decompose, release gas, and boost the heat retention, resulting in even higher temperatures - a classic positive feedback loop. And it's the temperature that drives the system, so it has the phase lead. Now, in the past 200 years, we humans have removed very deep deposits of carbon - oil and coal - and burned them, boosting the greenhouse gas load beyond anything in the history contained in the ice core data. And we have measured the recent temperature changes, with increasing accuracy as time goes on, and the mean temperature is rising, following the CO2 and methane. This phase relationship is the smoking gun.
For the sake of this thought experiment, imagine that it is December 2008 and a Democratic President-Elect and an expanded Democratic majority in both House and Senate are poised to take office. What do the Mayberry Machiavellis do when they sense their dominion is about to come to an end?
Preemptive pardons all around? Bonfires and shredders 24/7?
at a baser level, the reason the first half of the 20th century was dominated by transportation advances (and manufacturing to massive scale) is because that was how to get rich and powerful (individually and as a nation). The latter half of the 20th Century with microchips and fiber optic data links and packet switching happened because the investors saw dollar signs in these things. If someone comes up with a business model which credibly demonstrates that hovercars would rake in trillions, there'd be a helluva lot of creative talent pushed into getting hovercars a reality.
So for the first half of the 21st Century, at least one obvious (to me) money carrot dangling out there is the environment and energy. The world's creative talent will devote more and more effort to develop green technology, renewable resources, clean energy, and sustainable development because there's fortunes to be made - especially when oil starts shooting over $100 a barrel. Solar photovoltaics (to pick one example out of many) are getting better, cheaper, and more widely available, while oil, gas, and conventionally-produced electricity are getting more expensive every year. Soon a solar roof will be an add-on to a new home just like a swimming pool or a multi-car garage...at first, a toy for the wealthy, but soon, the cost will be just a few extra percent on a mortgage, and people will see the bump in the resale value of the property, and buy in volume.
And then, energy companies will have to change. They'll become energy storage companies, providing the public with a service - buying up the excess power during sunny days, and selling the electrons back at night, for a service fee of course. Naturally, this change will be evolutionary and gradual, but eventually, a home without a solar system will look as out of place as, say, a home without central heat and air conditioning.
Those things we today call landfills will become carbon mines in the future, if the price of energy gets high enough. The way I see it, if you want to predict the future (at least the near-term future we're discussing here), then just like Watergate, follow the money.
If the Bush Administration handles it's illegal surveillance operations with the same level of competence that it has shown in all of it's other endeavors, maybe we don't have so much to worry about.
I am surprised that there haven't been more breakdowns in the system so far. After all, at some point all this electronic monitoring gets distilled down to where humans step in and read the information. People at NSA are smart enough to realize that they can end up in jail under some future administration when all the dirty laundry finally sees the light of day. There's got to be tremendous pressure on some of these people to keep towing the line. At some point, somebody's going to crack.
though I'm not so surprised. I was hoping that the illegal activities were limited in their effectiveness because of the stunning degree of incompetence the Bush Administration musters for anything it tries to do.
As has been pointed out several times, the most logical use of broad wiretapping and data mining is domestic political chicanery, not antiterrorism by any stretch. So many of these wingnut posters don't seem to get it that there really is no interest in defeating terrorism in any of the actions of this administration. It's the pure exercise of power, and self-aggrandizement, that motivates everything they do.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
