[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[Jim Kinney]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Damon L. Chesser <damon at damtek.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2010-02-24 at 23:06 -0500, Pete Hardie wrote:
> > I am not stepping into the climate briar patch, but I would like to
> > see the US get off the oil kick.
> > If we can convert to all electric cars, etc, we get more independence,
> > less pollution, quieter
>
> How are you going to generate all that electricity?  You do know that
> electric cars just move the source of the pollution, not eliminate it,
> right?  Instead of your tail pipe, you move the "carbon" to a power
> plant.  Did I mention, due to the laws of supply and demand, now your
> home heating/electric bill is going to dramatically go up?  Imagine at
> 6pm when 4.5 million people in ATL get home and plug in their cars.
> BOOM!  Big brown out.
>

One advantage of moving the pollution source from mobile to stationary is
remediation becomes feasible. At this time, we have no technology in place
or even on the drawing board that can sequester CO, CO2, O3, NOx stack
outputs that are not claimed by industry to be cost prohibitive.

Industry also claimed removing the lead from paint was going to be cost
prohibitive but we managed to make it work any way.


>
> > roads, and I can top off my car at home (solar, grid power, or even
> > put the dog on a treadmill generator)
> >
> > Wouldn't it be great to not worry about what the Middle East is doing?
>
> On this we agree.  Dare I say, Drill hear, Drill now?
> >
>

I can't find the reference (bookmarked elsewhere on another machine) to the
discussion that if the entire planet were just a thin crust 2 miles thick
and the remaining insides were nothing but oil, at the current rate of
growth in energy consumption  based on oil, we would still run out in about
300 years.

If oil costs 10x what it does now, the obesity problem would abate as people
had to actually _do_work_ instead of having a machine do it for them.

When gas prices hit the $5/gal amount, the roads were far less congested and
the EPA reported a notable drop in metropolitan air pollution.

A better solution to traffic congestion is not to widen roads but to raise
the gas taxes thus forcing people to be more prudent in their consumption.
Take the revenue and spend it better ways to move large quantities of people
and explore short run smaller-scale people movers (automatic trollys,
flywheel busses from neighborhoods to larger shopping areas and other people
movers - i.e. make the planner actually PLAN! )

>
>
>
> --
> Damon
> damon at damtek.com
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness
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