Sometimes we go down the wrong path and waste our efforts towards a desired goal.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\03\16\story_16-3-2007_pg3_5

>>>>>>>
...According to one well-established and peer-reviewed model, the effect of the EU cutting emissions by 20% will postpone warming in 2100 by just two years, yet the cost will be about $90 billion annually. It will be costly, because Europe is a costly place to cut CO2, and it will be inconsequential, because the EU will account for only about 6% of all emissions in the twenty-first century. So the new treaty will be an even less efficient use of our resources than the old Kyoto Protocol.

It is important to learn from the past. We have often been promised dramatic cuts in CO2 emissions far into the future, only to see the promises vanish when we got there. In Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the West promised to stabilise emissions, but overshot by 12%. In Kyoto, we were promised a 7% reduction in world emissions, but will probably achieve only 0.4%. Of course, those promises were made by politicians who in all likelihood will no longer be in office when the time comes to fulfil them.

We will not be able to solve global warming over the next decades, but only the next half or full century. We need to find a viable, long-term strategy that is smart, equitable, and doesn’t require inordinate sacrifice for trivial benefits. Fortunately, there is such a strategy: research and development. Investing in R&D;of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would leave future generations able to make serious and yet economically feasible and advantageous cuts. A new global warming treaty should mandate spending 0.05% of GDP on R&D;in the future. It would be much cheaper, yet do much more good in the long run.
<<<<<<<

The numbers I read the other day is that "we" are spending something like $25 on mitigation for every dollar on adaptation. The R&D;is relatively infinitesimal. Perhaps the rallies should be more focused on adaptation and R&D;rather than on efforts that delay the inevitable by a couple of years.

Are we talking about Europe here? We are staging an event in Boise, Idaho. Your thoughts are obvious and the numbers look good, if they are accurate. But you have to start somewhere! This is a drop in the bucket, but maybe it will get people, at least local people, thinking about it. Because right now they aren't. The 'sacrifices' we are asking people to make are very small. Replacing light bulbs with CFL's, turning down the AC by 2 degrees, getting off your butt and walking once in a while instead of driving everywhere, basic no-brainers. You can't turn this thing around all at once, but I don't think it's asking people too much to drive cleaner cars and recycle.
Joan Thomas

Joan perhaps we should talk about Europe. The Washington Post has a very relevant article on the cost and the consequences. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800758.html?hpid=sec-business

Boise should do something about its polluted air to make it easier to breath.

Folks,

Joan and I, and the rest of the organizing committee for the Concert for Climate Action, welcome everyone to come on down Saturday for a day of good music, inspiring (and short!) speeches and loads of educational information on how you can reduce your carbon footprint without making excessive sacrifices. And we can send a big message to our congressional representatives that it's time to take action and reverse the present trend on carbon pollution (not that Sali or Craig will hear our roar! :-). We've gotten great support locally from KBCI and hope to make as big an impact on this town as Al Gore did back in January!

Irwin, my feet are only 10 1/2. Those guys wearing 15's need help. See: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/309369_greens29.html

Todd Meyers writes:

>>>>>Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels made leadership on climate change a central theme of his administration, including Seattle's plan to meet the Kyoto carbon emission targets in 2012. The mayor promised to spend $37 million in the next two years and millions more to achieve that goal -- about $21 to $42 for every ton of carbon emissions reduced.

The high cost, however, leads one to question if reducing carbon emissions is the mayor's primary goal. The city of Seattle could go to established organizations such as the Oregon Climate Trust, which charges only $10 per ton of CO2 reduced, or the Chicago Climate Exchange, where carbon credits cost $4 per ton.

Those organizations offer programs that reduce carbon emissions elsewhere to offset Seattle's emissions. Buying offsets would reduce carbon far more than funding expensive public works projects.

That's not the only example.

Environmental activists advocate "green building standards" for state buildings. Paying a little more up front on energy systems in new buildings, they say, will reduce energy use later. Many of these "green" buildings such as Seattle City Hall, however, end up using more energy than those they replaced. A "green" Tacoma middle school used 25 percent more energy in its first year than a comparable non-"green" school built at the same time in the same district.

The reaction of environmental activists to such data is illustrative. Instead of demanding improvements, they defend the failed standards. One proponent of such standards admitted that "the certification process doesn't audit actual performance of the building or how much energy it really uses."

Further, market-oriented solutions that successfully reduce carbon emissions often are shunned. That was made obvious recently in Europe. Energy producers who reduce carbon emissions may sell credits to others who exceed the emission cap. In Britain, energy firms earned 1 billion pounds ($1.88 billion) from such trading. Instead of celebrating this confluence of environmental responsibility and profit motive, the World Wildlife Fund called for a "windfall tax" on that profit.

Their discomfort with "profit" outweighed concern about global warming. Taxing the profit serves only to reduce the incentive of companies to reduce carbon emissions.

In Washington state, green power advocates actively oppose our largest source of carbon-free, renewable energy -- hydropower. Although they claim that no new sources of significant hydropower exist, they added additional barriers to potential development by classifying major hydro as non-renewable in Initiative 937.

That same initiative, however, counts other renewable energy sources an extra 20 percent toward required targets if the project is built using union apprentices. Such efforts seem to indicate that they are willing to sacrifice carbon reduction for an economic ideology.

Environmental activists frequently lament we are not taking global warming seriously. The gap between their words and actions undermines their credibility. Until they are willing to support effective market-oriented environmental solutions that preserve consumer choice, we have to wonder whether they really care about reducing carbon emissions, or are just using the issue to achieve other goals.<<<<

Irwin, just like for the Europeans in the WP article, details seem to get in the way here.

Yeah, who wants to live in a cleaner environment, anyway?

Besides, lets look at a realistic view of the numbers:

Lets say I drive a 1991 Chevrolet F2500 and I get 13 mpg. I drive 30 miles per day during weekdays. We'll assume that for the sake of current events, gas prices are $2.75. Also assume the truck is paid for and monthly insurance is $40. There are approximately 21 working days per month.

It costs me ((30 mi/day)/(13 mi/g)* $2.75) + ($40/21 days) = $8.26 per day.

Now lets say I buy a new car that costs $420 a month, gets $35 mi/g and the insurance is $100 a month.

((30 mi/day)/(35 mi/g) * 2.75) + ($100/21 days) + ($420/21 days) = $27.12 per day.

So it costs me over 3x a workday to buy a new, more fuel efficient vehicle that gets me no more benefit than knowing I'm helping reduce CO2 in my community/city. To a low income family earning just enough to make ends meet this is never going to be a reality.

Of course, since I make a decent wage and since I'm one of those flaming liberal types, I've upgraded to the 35 mpg vehicle, I've reduced my drive to 10 miles and I bike during the summer. I will be installing solar water heating to reduce my dependence on natural gas and then looking at higher efficiency solar panels for electricity. I've replaced every lightbulb with high efficiency bulbs and I use solar lighting for the outside of my house.

Why? Because I friggin care. Because I don't like the fact that American mileage has reduced over 2mpg over the last 10 years despite a dearth of higher mileage vehicles being available. It's because I don't like the fact that mercury emissions are making the fish I like unhealthy to eat. I don't like that the ocean has already risen enough to wipe out islands in the Aleutians, nor that the permafrost in Alaska has thawed so much that houses are crumbling because of unstable ground. I don't like it that the glaciers in North America are almost gone, that fisheries that normally would hold trout and other cold water fish now hold panfish and bass. Instead of finding lame ass figures and quotes that support my selfish lifestyle I am actually working to change things, to inform people and to make a difference for future generations.

I hope you guys are going to pass out a survey at the door to all attendees, and ask how much fuel they used getting there and will use going home. Then I think it would also be helpful to know the aggregate of fuel used by the performers to get there and return. Then you need to hand out an assessment of what impact on the environment that the concert itself will have.
I recycle everything that can be recycled, use cold water to wash with, a clothes line to dry with, but I do not burn gallons of fuel going to movies or concerts with masses of other folks claiming that is doing something for the environment. And I simply refuse to turn down the heat on very cold days (which are continuing) to keep it from getting warm.

Marion,

First of all, we are encouraging attendees to bike, walk, carpool and take public transportation (what little we have here in Boise). It's stated right on the poster above. Beyond that, we are estimating that several hundred people will travel about 10 miles on average each way (which is probably an overestimate). According to the SIU website, this corresponds to about 3 tons of carbon emissions. We are using some of the funds we have raised to purchase green tags to offset these emissions by investing in non-polluting energy technologies. That is what we, the committee organizing this event, are doing with regards to your concerns.

I suggest everyone use the carbon footprint calculator. http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

Any meaningful reductions have to start with a baseline assessment.

There is bad news on ethanol. See: http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=3097

Please tell me how you are cutting carbon emissions by using up the carbon saved by someone else....even if you do "buy" green tags, whatever that means. Is the whole purpose of cutting the carbon footprint by common people so the rich can continue their excessive lifestyles by "buying carbon credits"?
I could understand wanting everyone to cut back on their use of fuel, but I do not understand how anyone can call burning up thousands of gallons of fuel to party, saving anything.
If you really want to save something have a day of going nowhere, leaving all but essential utilities off, no tv, no computers, eating cold sandwiches, etc. If you want to party, party, but be honest about it.

Marion might as well complain about how we're doing this on computers. Computers that are using "energy" and have "lead" in them.

Marion's complaint, while it has a shred of intelligence behind it, doesn't do a damn thing to convince a single person of anything. The community has to come together to share information, to learn from experiences of others, to communicate and to feel as a part of a community, otherwise selfishness and then apathy sets in to these methods of reduction. Teaching people, making them aware and getting them excited about new technologies and methods makes them more likely to go to their friends, their coworkers, their families and their communities and share the information and to encourage others to reduce their footprint.

This is a grassroots event, like thousands of others across the nation and it's slowly building up a momentum that has the potential to change the world.

But no, we should just call it a party and move on, right Marion?

Jay, perhaps there is some middle ground on the party. Just have the party goers agree not to smoke ANYTHING during the event as a small step to carbon offsetting other behaviour. ;)

Yeah, those damn hippies will smoke anything, won't they.

Jay, there is the alternative to just eat ABT brownies and sequester the carbon in porta-potties!

Guys,

Not to be a party-pooper (sorry just couldn't resist that pun after Craig's post), but as noted in the above poster, Julia Davis Park is an alcohol-free zone (though they didn't mention other intoxicants :-). There may even be some people who would question whether to call it a party as a result of that policy.

On the one hand, I tend to agree with Marion. How can anybody deny there's some irony in holding a "climate action" fest, that many participants will drive to, when the single most significant "climate action" that most individuals can take is to drive less?

But on the other hand, if a hundred, or even twenty people leave the event with some new REAL motivation to live a lower-impact lifestyle, the surely it can be deemed a success.

It's way easier to talk the talk, than to walk the walk - look at Al Gore and late-arriver John Kerry.

(Frankly, nobody's convinced me that humans can have any positive impact on the world climate. But there's no denying they can reduce local pollution by driving less.)

I've been a year-round bike commuter in Boise for 20+ years. (Since before it became fashionable!) I'd invite you to check out my ongoing musings on my <A >Bike Nazi</A> blog.

Regarding carbon offsets like the green tags see: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/50077/

Carbon Offsets: Buying Your Way Out of Responsibility
By Dara Colwell, AlterNet. Posted April 11, 2007.

>>>>>
More and more people are using carbon offsets to rationalize consumption. But will paying extra money to have trees planted in India really negate the pollution from your flight to Europe?

Presidential hopefuls do it, celebrities do it, educated CEOs and even Swedes do it -- it's carbon offsets, the market-based solution to global warming that's currently grabbing column inches and investment bankers' lips. A booming multimillion-dollar market that's expected to more than quadruple within the next three years, the industry has garnered as much criticism as feel-good hype. Its detractors, mainly in Europe, remain unconvinced the system actually works, claiming its impact is unclear at best, and that it creates loopholes that lets polluters do business as usual.
"It's buying your way out of responsibility," says Kevin Smith, a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute, an academic think tank based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Smith, who also co-authored "The Carbon Neutral Myth," believes that free-market environmentalism is a gimmick that appeals to an increasingly carbon-conscious public. "It's a technological quick fix that's deeply flawed and used more as a means to absolve climate sins rather than tackle the actual issue," he says…
<<<<<<<

I think the ABT brownies and cold hotdogs would be a step in the right direction. Jerky would be a fine substitute for cooked foods too.

I think this business of "carbon credits" has to be one of the most funny and hypocritical things to ever come down the pike. If we need to save our resources, we ALL need to save it. If I lived like Ted Kazinsky did, I couldn't save enough to heat Gore's swimming pool and pool house for a month, or make one flight for John Travolta. They have to cut back and save too....if they truly believe that global warming is real, I don't think they do, nor for that matter do I.
Unfortuantely this has become a hallmark of the environmental movement, come up with a great and wonderful idea and force someone else to do the sacrificing, while they go on about their lives as usual.
OK, one question, what is an ABT brownie?
I hope you guys have fun, but please don't try to claim you are saving the earth.

Marion, I suspect you are far too beautiful to remember the halcyon days of the '60s. ABT = Alice B. Toklas

I remeber the 60s as baby boys and DIAPERS, the kind we washed and hung on the line! I don't know who that lady might be, don't recall hearing the name. I was too busy with little boys getting into stuff to pay much attention to the hippies, was that who she was?

I haven't driven a car to work - even once - in Boise since 1997. (And I have had a job the whole time...)

How do I make arrangements for an Algore or Heinz-Kerry or DiCaprio to start sending me a generous check each month, so they can continue to live their high-falutin', carbon-producin' lifestyle???

(If you can remember the 60s, you weren't doing it right! nudge nudge, wink wink)

Uh-oh! The IPCC just got caught fudging (should have stayed with ABT brownies) the numbers to make a tenuous argument. See: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001169this_is_just_embaras.html

Roger PIelke writes: "The Figure below is found in the IPCC WG II report, Chapter 7, supplementary material (p. 3 here in PDF). I am shocked to see such a figure in the IPCC of all places, purporting to show something meaningful and scientifically vetted. Sorry to be harsh, but this figure is neither. [Note: The reference (Miller et al. 2006) is not listed in the report (pointers from readers would be welcomed).]

I am amazed that this figure made it past review of any sort, but especially given what the broader literature on this subject actually says. I have generally been a supporter of the IPCC, but I do have to admit that if it is this sloppy and irresponsible in an area of climate change where I have expertise, why should I have confidence in the areas where I am not an expert?

Addendum, a few of the many problems with this figure:

1. Global average temperatures do not cause disaster losses, extreme events cause disasters, mostly floods and tropical cyclones.

2. if you can't attribute disaster losses regionally to changes in extremes, then you can't do it globally with a metric only loosely (at best) related to extremes.

2. A 9-year smoothing in a 35 year record?

3. The IPCC has said that 30 years is not sufficient for such an attribution analysis, a 35 year record with 4 degrees of freedom probably isn't either.

4. The Muir-Wood global dataset (if that is what is used) has huge error bars not noted here. Any global analysis should be matched with a regional summation.

5. The Muir-Wood dataset, without error bars, leads to opposite conclusions using a longer record to 1950. Why didn't they show that? I wonder . . .

6. Studies of floods and hurricanes at the regional level, around the world, do not support a relationship of average global atmospheric temperature and disaster losses.

7. A consensus conference with experts around the world came to very different conclusions. What happened to the importance of consensus?"

----------
Go to the weblink to see the number and chart.

Craig, this isn't "just got caught fudging", this is a disagreement within a scientific community over the relevance of a set of numbers that were originally for a workshop and not for use as a global indication.

And you do realize that the guy you're quoting is sold on global warming/climate change, right? He's basically one of the more aggressive fact checkers, a definate plus in any scientific work. The issues he finds are valuable to make sure no other neglegence towards facts will happen from the same sources in the future.

So I guess I'm trying to figure out what you are actually trying to get at with your post.

Jay, I believe what Dr. Pielke was getting at was how "spin" (read propaganda) undermines the scientific process. Supposedly 100's of scientists read the IPCC report and gave their approval. Dr. Pielke sums it up best when he wrote: "I have generally been a supporter of the IPCC, but I do have to admit that if it is this sloppy and irresponsible in an area of climate change where I have expertise, why should I have confidence in the areas where I am not an expert?"

I am not an expert. Why should I have confidence in this report given this glaring overreaching of a correlation of property damage and temperature rise?

Final thoughts on topic. Boise has REAL problems attached to its explosive growth, which appears to be continuing. Clean air is top on the list and closely followed by clean water. Managing this growth and achieve attainable environmental goals should be the focus in my opinion. Everyone that shares the same boat and must row together and in the same direction to move forward should readily share these goals. No need to resort to global alarmism to keep it real and keep people rowing. Be a community that sets realistic targets and hits them because your very quality of life is dependent on it. Solve your parochial challenges. Enough said. Have fun at your party.

Guess it worked, it sure has gotten cold. And look at the east, they are freezing. Maybe next year don't make quite so many chants and beat so many drums.

Of course it's also called Global Warming, or more specifically, Global Climate Change. So since it's cold here, it must be cold around the globe, right Marion? Just ignore the Global part and your life can be as cozy and as insular as you want it to be.