Climate Change
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Quick round up
- Criminal caught due to Skype trace
- Al Gore in fact environmentally friendly, or at least environmentally correct.
- Trees that grow 90 feet in six years sound really cool
- This was the problem I had with my car
- Annoying quote of the moment, from CNN.com which has been irritating me lately, after such good coverage of the Israel-Hez conflict (absent Anderson Cooper)
In the immigration debate, I’ve tried to do three things:
One is to deplore the degree to which the debate is driven by the dark impulse of racism. What concerns many Americans about illegal immigration is the sense that it speeds up the Latinization of the United States — where Anglo-Saxon culture is replaced by Latin culture, where English gives way to Spanish, and where we Americans become strangers in our own land.
He “tries to deplore”? Even, or perhaps especially, in our secular public age need the trappings of religion and loud protestations of faith, but this is taking it to the riduculous. How is it racist to want to keep English as the dominant language, and to not want to become a “stanger in our own land”? That’s dumber than claiming Islam as a “race”.
- Women and their brains
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Cold and overworked
When was the last time it was in the mid 30s in October in Georgia? Weird.
And I’ve already worked eight hours today, and it’s not even 9:00 yet. Blech.
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Global warming is coming right at us!
I read this article Greenland ice cap thickens slightly with it’s winning quote
However, they said that the thickening seemed consistent with theories of global warming, blamed by most experts on a build-up of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars.
and laughed. So, global warming produces more ice?
Then I read this article in Wired Grim Outlook for Africa’s Future. The article is unremarkable with the following sentence standing out:
The potential consequences of global warming could be devastating for the world’s poorest continent, yet its nations are among the least equipped to cope.
Money buys things, primarily health and safety. If they weren’t the poorest continent,
then none of this would be devastating. -
Public piety
I have long believed that people are hard wired to practice religion in some form, and this current article on Cnn.com “So Long to Gas Guzzler Guilt“. The article is about a company called “Terrapass” that trades in pollution credits to make up for the auto emissions of environmentalists
The company is a for-profit enterprise, but caps its profits at a maximum of 10 percent of revenues.
Those revenues so far, Arnold says, are “itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny.” The company started selling TerraPasses in November and had sold about 620 as of last week.
If you buy a TerraPass, the money will be used to purchase smog allowances on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The Climate Exchange allows polluting companies that produce less than a certain amount of airborne pollutants to sell credits to other companies that then allow them to go over the limit.
The overall limits are reduced over time making it more costly to exceed them. Organizations and companies that buy pollution credits reduce the overall supply of credits and also make it more costly for companies to exceed the limits.
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Since car drivers are under no legal compulsion to try to compensate for their tailpipe emissions, the TerraPass will only appeal to those who feel some guilt about their driving, and want to do something about it.
Not surprisingly, few SUV drivers have been buying them. Most have gone to owners of fuel-efficient cars that produce relatively few pollutants.
That initially surprised Arnold.
“We fully expected to target SUV drivers with SUV guilt,” he said. “It just doesn’t exist”
Instead, he’s been traveling to environmental fairs pitching the idea to those who, for the most part, drive fuel efficient small cars and gas/electric hybrid vehicles.
“Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars,” said Arnold.
As for himself, Arnold doesn’t own a car. He commutes to work by bicycle.
The need to show piety is deeply ingrained in us.