Greenhouse Gases to be Listed as Pollutants by EPA

Unless humanity is willing to set aside industrial growth, there's no alternative.

Wind, Solar, and Hydro simply are enough. You could cover every plain with wind turbines, every square foot of desert with solar panels, and every river with a damn, and it still would be just a drop in the bucket. Probably more effective would be to paint the surface of everything white. That would do more then cutting CO2 emissions or labeling it a public health threat.

 

Ummm what? Studies have shown (for example) that North Dakota alone could power ~1/3 of the entire US with wind energy.

You are grossly misinformed.

GHG emission restrictions were inevitable, particularly after the supreme court smacked down the Bush EPA several years ago. I, of course, find this to be great news.

 

While I agree with the overall need to get greener with sane plans, here is a reminder for the Chicken Little posters:

Earth Day 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something.”
• Kenneth Watt, ecologist

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”
• George Wald, Harvard Biologist

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”
• Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”
• New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,”
• Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”
• Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”
• Life Magazine, January 1970

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”
• Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”
• Martin Litton, Sierra Club director

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years (from 1970), somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”
• Sen. Gaylord Nelson

“The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist

Mostly .... oops.

 

Because if you calculate the numbers it shows first of all the staggering effort that it would take.

The worlds largest windfarm in oregan I think produces 1/3 of a nuclear reactor - that's pretty impressive....but it takes 1,500 windmills to generate that 300MW. So to meet our electric needs, you'd have to create about a million wind mills.

Basically, one windmill for ever 300 people. First of all, I don't believe that one single windmill moving slowly and on some days not moving at all can even light up the homes of 300 people and their jobs and commerical activities....but let's put that aside. Let's say you cover an entire 1000 sq miles of area in wind farms and that they can store energy in batteries and etc to make it all work.

Now, even then, that just provides the electricity...it doesn't even get into the CO2 produced from fossil fuels in the transportation industry, which is the main culprit of warming. So you would have to increase the number of windmills by another order of magnitude and all of a sudden you're literally covering an entire state in windmills. It just gets ridiculous scalng.

Ok, let's say you have an answer for that. Now here comes another point...we don't have any idea on what reducing CO2 emissions will do at this point. We don't know if it's too late, or how much to reduce it by. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long time, and if it's already caused ice to melt, we may already be on a runaway train. So we could be doing all of this in vain.

I'm not against wind power...go for it I say....milk it for all it's worth...what I am saying is that trying to cap CO2 emissions is going to hurt industry and is just uncessary.

How do I know it will hurt industry? Because industry emits CO2. If you want to say use wind farms, go for it, absolutely. But do it because it's cheaper and smarter and it naturally out competes fossil fuels.

In the meantime, I suggest buying property not near a beach and not in a flood plain.

 

Then why hasn't it been done? If it's cheaper and so awesome at providing energy, what's holding it back? And please don't tell me it's the nuclear industry or oil companies.

Who wouldn't want a lower electic buid, why aren't they turning North Dakota into a super farm of windmills????

 

I don't post in the D&D because I don't feel well-informed on most issues, but I like to lurk around; I do know a little bit about the issue at hand here, though.

I've been writing a semester long research paper on the effects of aerosols on our atmosphere, and most current publications don't even debate whether or not Global Warming is happening / is plausible / is going to happen. A lot of people in my department, and my advisor especially aren't even concerned with the political atmosphere surrounding the issue; my advisor says its "a fascinating time to be a young Geologist, because this is such an interesting event", as though he doesn't even care about the possible consequences so much as the academic angle.

So I guess that's kind of directed at the people who think the whole thing is a government tax plan...I don't believe that it is. The rate at which its happening and the long term effects on human civilization are up for debate, but reducing carbon emissions is certainly not a bad thing for anyone.

 

I hate to break it to you, newyorker, but it's kind of hard to get funding for ENORMOUS projects like massive windfarms when proven technology exists elsewhere with a lower TCO. New technology in this day and age will always require an incentive to invest. Be it regulation, or otherwise.

Secondly, not everyone is thrilled about the idea of 6 kajillion wind turbined along the horizon. Texas is getting there, thanks to the enormous ******* known as T. Boone Pickens, and Mass. is supposed to be installing turbines off cape cod eventually. Lost of politics involved. Lots.

 

The alarmists damage the credibility of going green by the general populace. First, eggs were good. Then, they were bad. Then they were good. Then the yolks were bad while the white was good. Same goes for milk, etc. etc.

Mixed messages breed apathy.

 

This seems to be a good option. There are many aerosols which work to counteract the warming effect; sulfate aerosols block radiation and produce a cooling effect, though this type of geoengineering could produce adverse health effects.

 

This too. It is unfortunate that Al Gore has deemed himself spokesperson for Global Warming, as he was such a polarizing figure to begin with. Half the country will be less inclined to take it seriously based on his endorsement alone.

 

that's what i don't get - one of the arguments of wind farms is that it has a lower TCO - and yet you say it's higher. It's not a new technology, it's an old one...

Let's see how it plays out.

 

My understanding was that, per MW, coal was still cheaper. However, wind may have a lower TCO compared to "clean coal" power alternatives.

 

Geo-engineering should be avoided completely on the "this won't end well" reasoning. That nebulous reasoning that says, "I don't know what will go horribly wrong, but something definitely will."

 

Wind is arguable the only truly green technology (except for the 10 birds a year each on kills). Hydro and Solar have issues on a mass scale as well.

Ok, look, let's be frank, i have heard so much crap over the years that i have probably gotten to a point where i would tune something out as I am a skeptic. That's going to be overcome when i see some proof and studies and papers and theroetics aren't going to convince me after years of being told half-truths and non-truths. I don't trust the whole environmental movement, there's lots of exaggerations and misrepresentations, from Al Gore to scientists to environmentalists.

I agree Global warming is a problem, but I don't think we are going to regulate our way out of it. if you want to succeed with reducing CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels, which i see as practically impossible...then you have to do it by making it cheaper than CO2 without "pollution taxes" on CO2. That's just a bad idea.

A bad idea because the world will never actually implement and you are wasting precious time on red herrings when the problem grows closer. If you feel that it's an issue, then advocate investing in technology and research around it - but it's not there yet. That's my biased opinion. It might change in the future however.

But making people pay more for energy at a time when you have billions of people struggling....the problem isn't clean energy, the problem is 6 billion people and growing.

You can't address environmental issues independent of the welfare of all of these people - what' their incentive when all they are doing is struggling to survive - about half of them at least.

And it's growing, there will be 10 billion people....the models are not forecasting pop growth, and they are terribly inaccurate. I don't think anyone knows how long it will take for CO2 to be absorbed, or if we can facilliatate that. What we do know is we can cope with changes if we plan in advance.

 

Like what?

Which models do you feel are terribly inaccurate?