81 Responses to “Global Warming”

1. mhuyck Says:
   July 8th, 2005 at 3:14 pm

   I am much more interested in learning about what we can do about climate change than trying to pick apart the politics of the issue. I would love to hear concrete ways in which individuals and companies are making a difference.

   Examples:

   Does recycling work? What happens to all that stuff we sort?

   States like Massachusetts now require electric companies to include information about the sources of the electricity they distribute in a format similar to the ingredients label on cereal boxes. Does anybody read those labels? Has anyone chosen other suppliers for their electricity?

   What is the impact of riding public transportation instead of driving a car?

2. jazzwoman Says:
   July 12th, 2005 at 7:58 pm

   how about getting rid of SUVs? maybe we all need mini coopers or a toyota prius! perhaps a bicycle will suffice!

3. virgobee Says:
   July 14th, 2005 at 12:45 pm

   Climate change is with us to stay and will prove to be the biggest challenge the human race will ever face. Some time in the not-so-distant future there’ll be a tipping point where it’ll become apparent to even us ostrich Americans that we have to make radical changes. There’s definitely no hope of stopping climate change, we can only hope to somewhat mitigate its effects — and to build systems that deal with those inevitable effects.

   So what has to be done to achieve that mitigation? How can we adapt to a changing planet?

   I think a series of shows is necessary to thoroughly explore this very complex issue. Why not make it a weekly or monthly series like Passion Thursdays? There are SO many aspects to climate change, you’ll never run out of ideas. And you can feel the glow of satisfaction from being at the journalistic forefront (given the relative dearth of press it gets here) and helping to educate a woefully ignorant American public.

4. Potter Says:
   July 15th, 2005 at 9:21 am

   I have read two of the three articles by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker magazine and am about the read the last. This series made the impression on me as nothing else has except perhaps for some visual presentation\s I have seen on TV. But the method is to get particular: into someone’s life and how that has changed because of climate change that is already happening. Industry workers in Alaska, scientists, native people’s lives. These could be wonderful interviews. And like the Emerson show, the sound effects ( animals, water), could help draw the listener into the scene.

   The point is to warn of the tsunami coming. And it may also be sudden and catastrophic.

   The recent PIPA survey shows that Americans want to act on this.

   Helping to keep the anxiety level up in a series ( I agree it should be an ongoing series) would be a service.

5. virgobee Says:
   July 15th, 2005 at 9:50 am

   I would love to hear a show on greenhouse gas emissions trading. Starting off with the Chicago Climate Exchange and really delving into the pros and cons of the wider issue.

   I really don’t understand all of this, am definitely torn about it: on the one hand it’s creating positive change of a sort, getting the ball rolling; on the other hand, it seems to be a really cynical way of getting at the issue by trading on these large polluters’ unwillingness to actually cut their emissions — they just throw around some money and it’s accepted as progress.

   Is this the first step toward real progress or is it a stopgap?

6. P&N Lydon Says:
   July 16th, 2005 at 1:07 am

   Hi, Chris and Company, Congratulations on the progress of the show and the blog so far. The great amount of work you’ve put into it is very evident in the vitality and the range of subjects, so right on!

   Was hugely pleased to see that you are getting ready for a blast on climate change, and possibly even to plan to treat it with some regularity. It is indeed one of the great policy issues and challenges to our civilization now before us, and history will very much grade us on how we respond right here and now. For the moment, we are doing very badly–Potter and others should continue on to the last one of the three Elizabeth Kolbert articles, particularly the end of it where she is scathingly clear about the willful and self-serving shortsightedness and inability to cooperate that is leading our country, and the world in general which is desperate for leadership from us, into very dangerous territory.

   I’ll try to come back in on this topic later, but let me say in brief that this problem is too big for individual companies and people–broad and long term social action of the kind that can only be led by governments is essential. Basically, we have to replace energy from fossil sources with solar, wind or nuclear power. Technically, it can all be done, including power for automobiles.

   Economic fears are the source of the immobilizing objections to action. They are misguided, since there don’t have to be any negative employment effects, and the costs of the transition, which it is true will be large, are not just “spending,” but are true investments in cheaper, as well as cleaner, power in the long run.

   This is a genuinely important subject–if it thrives on Radio Open Source, you’ll do a great national service.

7. ral@sdc Says:
   July 16th, 2005 at 5:39 pm

   Give Greed a Chance?

   virgobee has identified a terrific topic: carbon emissions trading. Persepectives as divergent as those represented by The Economist and the Natural Resources Defense Council have found agreement in support of carbon emissions trading.

   http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4146710
   http://www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/cfb0605.pdf

   If there is such agreement, what is holding back the US? If not, what are the arguments against carbon emission trading? If market forces alone cannot be expected to address all aspects of carbon emissions control, where will market forces fail and regulatory interventions be required?

8. John Gunther Says:
   July 19th, 2005 at 7:20 pm

   You might talk to people in Alaska which is having dramatic and almost irrefutable climate change effects. Ice pack destruction leading to likely polar bear extinction, 7 F degree average temp change in 50 years, massive destruction of spruce forests by Spruce Bark Beetle that is enormously more active in warmer weather, much shorter oil exploration season (only done during coldest weather), shorefront villages being inundated by higher sea level, etc. etc. ALl of these have been extensively reported.

9. Katherine Says:
   July 21st, 2005 at 5:56 pm

   We would indeed like to do a small series on climate change. Our ideas now include: the politics of it, what industry’s doing, focussing on one corner of the globe, and looking at several specific studies (e.g., on disease, agriculture, sea level, etc.). Emissions trading and state-level initiatives certainly could fit in there somewhere… Keep the ideas coming.

10. Jim Says:
    July 22nd, 2005 at 7:38 pm

    We all know how important this issue is. We don’t know if it is too late to make the degree of disaster less, but we can try. THE BIG QUESTION is how we can change people’s behavior with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. The most obvious action (in the US) is to provide disincentives for fossil fuel use in automobiles by increasing the gasoline tax (42 cents here compared to $3.00 to $3.50 equivalent in all Western European countries).

    Let’s talk about how to make this elementary step politically viable. At present a politician even acknowledging the possibility of increasing the gas tax is giving his/her opponent a hammer and asking to be clobbered with it. So my topic is: How can we begin to change that?

11. SevenCharlie Says:
    July 25th, 2005 at 11:28 am

    When climate change comes up, people talk about green-house gasses. Now, I’m all for living greener & cleaner regardless of the cause of climate change. But what about past climate change? What caused those? Why is now different from then? I’m not saying that I don’t believe in human-induced climate change. I just want to see current climate change put in historical context. I’d also like to see competing theories (such as increased solar-activity) debunked.

    Some links I’ve been forwarded:

    http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310.html

    http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/cc.html

12. sendhil Says:
    July 25th, 2005 at 4:29 pm

    This is a great idea for a discussion. Discussion assumes even more importance with this issue because, as previously noted, making change demands coordinated social and/or governmental action; individual measures are not up to the problem.

    Tradable solutions to climate (such as the CCX: chicagoclimatex.com) are interesting because they hold the potential of harnessing well-developed market mechanisms to deal with the situation, but they’ll only work if there is an incentive to participate, and so far, I’m not aware of any that look like they’re going to lead to net reductions (at best, they slow or stop the rate of increase of emissions). The market mechanism shouldn’t blind us to the fact that this is an area of market failure; we all live on the same planet, don’t have to pay at the gate to enter or to dump our wastes (absent certain well-defined spheres of property rights), so externalities are rife.

    I agree that Kolbert’s series is a very good introduction to many facets of the issue and that it’s very troubling. The three parts of Kolbert’s article are posted at:
    http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050425fa_fact3
    http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050502fa_fact3
    http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050509fa_fact3

    A Q&A with her is also posted at:
    http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?050425on_onlineonly01

13. mulp Says:
    July 25th, 2005 at 9:44 pm

    I don’t recall reading or hearing anyone talking about the future, in a real sense. Oh, there are the futurists who conjure fantastic new technologies, or changes in culture and work.

    But that isn’t the future. When we speak of the past, we speak of two and a quarter centuries ago to Independence. Or maybe we look back five centuries to the earliest invasions of the Americas, and a period that was probably filled with near extinction of hundreds of cultures from disease.

    Let’s look to the future. Let’s try 2500AD? That would double the documented history of the Americas. Too far? How about 2250AD? That would basically double the life of the USA. If the USA is still in existance? If that is too far, how about thinking about 2100AD? That is just a long moment, a lifetime of a lucky man.

    What of our lifestyles today can be sustained for half a century? Does anyone suggest that we will still use fossil fuel for any of our energy needs?

    Looking ahead for the just the lucky lifetime; does anyone expect to be using fossil oil in cars the way we do today?

    Will we be able to afford the use of fossil oil or gas to heat our houses?

    Is there any question about the need to move away from fossil fuels?

    If half a century of promises that fusion power reactors are only two decades away has not delivered a fusion reactor, how can we expect technologies that solve the fossil energy problem to appear in a decade or two on command?

    What if it takes a century of work to make today’s travel without fossil oil affordable for most Americans? Do we wait until we can’t wait any longer and hope that it only takes a few years? Or do we start now and increasingly panic when we don’t have a solution and the oil dwindles? Even when we have a solution, how many decades will it take to replace all the cars and trucks we use today?

    Imagine David Bowie falls to earth and delivers the manufacturing plans for a little scooter that will run 100 miles on a glass of distilled water. But he doesn’t know how it works. Ok, within a year, we could be cranking out millions of scooters, but what of all the other vehicles. A few years for scientists and engineers to reverse engineer it, a few more to design and build prototypes, and then a few more to start making them. Even in this science fiction story it takes a couple of decades to change the world.

    Man hasn’t had his toe in space for half a century yet. While four decades ago we reached space, and three decades ago we reached the moon, we can’t yet reach space reliabilty, even though reaching space is one of the most critical technologies we possess today.

    As Americans, we are so expectent of instant results that we assume that problems can be solved in a jiffy, yet we have been working on problems for over half a century and we still aren’t ready to declare a solution for any of the half century problems. (The first attempts at commercial wind and photovoltaic power, and solar heating were about a half a century ago, then again in the 70s.)

    One of the standard excuses for not doing anything it to point to past predictions, and the one that really grates is the first “The Limits to Growth”, which everyone who hasn’t read it knows, said that there would be a complete resource crunch by 2000. (If one were to assign any years to its graphs, they would be more like 2050 and 2100.)

    So, we have this dual view of the future. “2020 is too far ahead to think about running out of oil.” “And, oh, we can bring a radically new technology online in a year or two and cover the world in five, or maybe ten, but it will definitely last for a hundred years, for sure.” Can we make them just one?

14. Liz Tracey Says:
    July 27th, 2005 at 9:04 pm

    Katherine:

    There are so many angles at which one can come at this. The ones I’ve found particularly saddening are those that concern biodiversity: sea birds being decimated by the loss of plankton, changes in penguin mating locations and drops in reproduction success, etc.

    Then there’s the issue of money — Science Friday did a good show about Rep. Barton’s bullying of the scientists who did the “hockey stick” study, but what completely infuriated me was that in the interest of “balance” they hadMyron Ebell from “Competitive Enterprise Institute” come on — a man with no scientific training whose positions (that global warming is unproven, and even if it is, it’s bad for business and thus shouldn’t be ameliorated) went unchallenges by the (fill-in) host.

    The money behind deniers is huge, and unless something very drastic changes in the next 2-3 years, it’s only going to grow. Meanwhile,our position on Kyoto becomes one more issue in the complex muddle of America’s role in the world community and how we fulfill our responsibilities to our neighbors and fellow planetary citizens.

    I also think this points to a larger issue (and one which might make a good show in and of itself) — the scientific illiteracy of the US, not only as compared to other developed countries, but simply in comparison to ourselves say 20 years ago. Certainly the amount of information has grown immensely, but I would venture a hypothesis that as the amount of scientific information (and access to it) has grown, the number of Americans possessing the skills to understand and put that information into context have dropped precipitously. This may well have risen in tandem with the regrowth of anti-intellectuallism in the US (witness the rise of evangelicals, the continuous drumbeating against the “liberal elite/media/intelligensia”). There’s a lot there, and you and Radio Open Source are the people to do it.

    P.S. The show on Islam and terrorism was perhaps one of the best shows, not just on the topic but overall radio, I have heard in many years. Thank you so much. You all rock.

15. carl Says:
    July 28th, 2005 at 2:24 pm

    Some things to think about:
    Hour long commutes in single passenger cars
    3000 Square Foot McMansions
    Decimation of small town retail districts in favor of malls and strip malls you have to drive to
    The “need” for the non frail, non elderly to have central AC and AC in our cars
    The “need” for tropical and non-local out of season fruits and vegetables during all seasons

    An observation:

    I worked for BB&N (Bolt, Baranek, and Newman when they were purchased by GTE. The BB&N campus was in Cambridge in a couple of buildings around Fresh Pond, very accessible to public transportation. GTE moved the campus into a new building in Burlington, which was not accessible by any public transportation, even commuter rail. They did not give this a second thought, but this decision forced hundreds of employees into an horrendous commute, and alienated many valuable employees who lived in Boston or Cambridge.

    What will it take to change the way we live and work? George W. is not out of step with American society in refusing to sign on to the Kyoto protocols. He is merely reflecting our own unwillingness to change our obscene habits.

16. virgobee Says:
    July 29th, 2005 at 2:58 pm

    I’m glad to see you’re thinking about a show on green building. It’s a growing movement, but I think often has the taint of dilettantism (if that’s even a word) — full of architects with big egos trying to be the next big green guru. Of course, this is true to some extent thus far, but the bigger reality is that our built environment accounts for a huge portion of greenhouse gases, and energy and materials use.

    We tend to hear a lot about the harm caused by cars and power plants (for obvious reasons) but the construction and operation of buildings accounts for almost 40% of all greenhouse gas emission, as well as the consumption of almost 40% of all energy energy use.

    Plus, the construction industry comprises a huge portion of our economy so a move toward more sustainable practices would have a huge impact.

    Here’s a good white paper on the whole subject, just in case you haven’t seen it yet:

    http://www.usgbc.org/Docs/Resources/043003_hpgb_whitepaper.pdf

17. allison Says:
    July 30th, 2005 at 12:36 am

    Have you read Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”. He puts forth that the number cause of the downfall of civilizations has been bad management of ecological resources. He explores why some societies make changes soon enough and others don’t.

    Perhaps there could be a look at why individuals can’t make the necessary shifts to preserve the ecosystem that sustains them? Is there something inherent in a market economy where no other values override the quest for bigger numbers after the dollar sign? If we impose values that buck up against the so-called free economy (which is only free for those who already have economy in their own back pocket) is necessarily socialism or communism? Is there a new -ism that can reflect a new collective wisdom about the need to protect our habitat so that if we do earn money we still have a place to enjoy it?

    Is it possible that we could mature as a society to a common contract that everyone must adhere in all pursuits to that part of the hippocratic oath that promises to “do no harm”? Why are we so comfortable with doing harm? Yes, we’re self-serving predators. But have we embraced the killer part of the predator instinct so blindly that we can’t see what it takes to self-preserve? Even the fiercest predators in the wild protect and provide for their young. If we don’t protect the planet that is the abode of our young, we aren’t even as clever as wild animals, yet we claim to be supreme.

    Is it impossible to retain the wisdom that you shouldn’t poison your own well in a meta-culture that homogenizes the human experience by stripping away indigenous values and making an abstract symbol ($) the unifying credo?

    How can it be that so many of us don’t know that the surface of the earth breathes and we are suffocating it with highways, parking lots, building footprints? We can’t be Green because we’ve lost contact with what the earth is, what sustainable systems are and how vital to an exquisite life it all is.

18. P&N Lydon Says:
    July 31st, 2005 at 3:20 pm

    A lot of wisdom has beeh harvested in the seventeen entries so far in this blog, and the radio show on climate change hasn’t even been on yet! Sendhil’s full web citations of the Elizabeth Kolbert articles, and Kolbert’s Q&A were particularly valuable. Ditto the urls from the Economist and NRDC, and for a good doc on green buildings, although that is a segmental approach, and at this stage, while not neglecting the many segments, I think we need to keep our thinking quite general.

    Particularly applause for Jim’s suggestion of taxes or fees to act as a disincentive across the entire economy for fossil energy use. Indeed it should be broadened from just gasoline, to all form of fossil carbon, particularly coal, which still produces half of U.S. electric power. Such a carbon tax (level to be set judiciously) would be simple administratively, since it would be paid by large energy corporations, which are relatively few in number, and it would come down to all of us, the real payers, in the form of increased–but not necessarily greatly increased– prices for gasoline, natural gas, and electricity, and for all the products that embody them.

    Disincentivizing greenhouse energy sources would give a positive relative incentive for all non-carbon energy sources, such as wind, solar, safe nuclear, and notably, energy efficiency, or nega-watts, That will encourage their development, which is very much needed, and will make them less expensive over time. Using taxes, rather than quotas or ceilings, automatically eliminates the whole issue of carbon trading (raised by Virgobee and RAL@SDC), which may in the end be useful, but which comes with huge transaction costs and provides endless fodder for disputes. Sendhil rightly hints that sharing arrangements have a certain intellectual fascination and attractiveness, but that they depend on the government’s creating quotas and ceilings lower than present carbon use. In ceiling-with-sharing proposals, it is not the sharing arrangements, but the imposing of the ceiling which is the hard part.

    Fossil carbon-specific taxes or fees are by far the best path, as any economist (notably and eloquently Martin Weitzman of Harvard in 1974 and thereafter Billy Pizer when at RFF), will testify. Remember when cigarettes were 25 cents a pack? Giant price rises driven by tobacco taxes had a big role in reducing smoking, a major social advance of the last decades.

    But taxes are looked upon as quick-death political poison in the US and aren’t very popular elsewhere as well. Jim is right in asking for thoughts on how we can solve that impasse, or at least make progress on it. The stakes of Jared Diamond’s new book, “Collapse,” mentioned by Allison just above, really are on the table in this climate change issue.

19. rpinnel Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 9:32 am

    If you’re looking to talk about the history of climate change and the idea that climate change isn’t a gradual thing, but rather an abrupt process, talk with John Cox, author of CLIMATE CRASH: Abrupt Climate Change and What it Means for Our Future. The publisher’s page for this book is: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10750.html

20. Katherine Says:
    August 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pm

    Jim, sendhil, mulp, carl, allison, and P&N Lydon: incentives and regulatory mechanisms are a critical part of thinking about the future — hopefully we can get at them in the business show and the solutions show (see update to the post, above).

    Liz Tracey: yes, biodiversity and the money trail — we’ll be following both — biodiversity hopefully in an Arctic show and the money trail in the politics show.

    To all of you: these ideas & links are great and really helpful.

21. allison Says:
    August 2nd, 2005 at 9:38 pm

    Katherine – one regulatory mechanism that Paul Hawken writes about in his book “The Ecology of Commerce” is a storage fee. It would work like this: First, we do not allow anyone to dispose of anything that is not biodegradable. Then, any item that you have finished using and can’t pass on to someone else must be returned to the manufacturer who must store anything that they can’t re-use or put safely back into the ecosystem. He argues that we would see a cataclysmic shift in manufacturing and design. Corporations would be in a hurry to figure out how to re-use or recycle parts and, they would have a huge incentive for developing ecologically sustainable products.

    Imagine if all those landfills were organized storage units and the government was receiving storage fees for everything….

22. virgobee Says:
    August 3rd, 2005 at 9:43 am

    Take a look at the work being done by a large group of NGO’s and socially responsible investment companies to use shareholder voting power — especially the really large institutional investors like CalPERS and other state pension funds — to try and shape the behavior of corporations and how they’re responding to climate change.

    At the forefront in addressing climate risk and trying to make companies more responsible to all their stakeholders is Boston-based Ceres, http://www.ceres.org. Great source of information about climate risk, environmental and sustainability reporting, shareholder campaigns, etc.

23. debba Says:
    August 3rd, 2005 at 5:48 pm

    Hmm:
    I have a question. Here in Minnesota, erstwhile veep Al Gore gave a pretty dramatic presentation on climate change sponsored by the Science Museum of Minnesota, with satellite imagery and so on. He KNOWS people, I guess. No press was allowed in, I suppose for good reason, but has anyone seen a web version of this presentation? I would have sent a URL on to friends, if it were.

    Also, do people look at http://www.grist.org/

24. BB Says:
    August 4th, 2005 at 2:04 pm

    I thought I knew of another good Al Gore presentation on climate change, but couldn’t find it after all. Instead, here’s a great presentation made by Harvard Professor John Holdren at the recent Investor Summit put on by Ceres and the UN Foundation:

    http://incr.com/05investorsummit/pdf/INCR_jholdren_present_05summit.pdf

25. charlieevett Says:
    August 4th, 2005 at 8:01 pm

    Any Climate Change radio show should try and get the authors of http://www.realclimate.org on the air.

    The trouble with climate change is that major changes are likely to be catastrophic, but we’re looking for gradual change.

26. cwmiller007 Says:
    August 5th, 2005 at 10:46 pm

    There’s actually little to nothing that can be done about this war to end all wars. In fact, the challenge we face in contrast to Carter’s late 70’s energy crisis “moral equivalent of war” is the fact that this is a war that can’t be won. What politician is willing to address a problem that he or she will be powerless to stop. Every in depth discussion of this topic that I’ve read reiterates that 3 to 5 degrees of warming are backed in the cake. We’re going to hit that iceberg, and this time, we’ll know way ahead of time what’s about to happen.

    However, we can stop throwing fuel on the fire, because that’s exactly what we’re doing, SUV nation, fiddling while Rome burns. Part of the fiddling is the tokenism of throwing a couple of solar panels around. We’re talking radical change here, to reform every aspect of life on earth, as the water we depend on, not the oil, will become the most precious resource.

    I think we need to move beyond the pathetic plea that the green movement typically rolls out, nostalgically declaring that a few techo fixes is all we need.

    Sustainability as the ecologist’s reformation of capitalism is dead. Long live adaptability/ survivability. Here’s a question for you: How can we get as many people on this lifeboat as possible? That lifeboat is built on a foundation of social equity.

27. cwmiller007 Says:
    August 6th, 2005 at 5:52 am

    Let me follow up to my previous gloom and doom diatribe.
    Yes, America and the world are on a perillous course. Point taken.

    But haven said that, here’s one architect in the UK that is blowing people’s minds in terms of suggesting those “radical changes” that we have to consider. Of course, we all will keep in mind that ecotopian ideas are designed to save people who have the money to live in these places.

    When we’re talking global climate change we’re talking mamouth mind boggling changes that will sweep us all off the map. The expenses of dealing with catastrophe will drawf our ability to build ecotopias. Enough gloom for now.

    Go immediately to Bill Dunster’s ZED factory site. This guy is a prophet, and he’s getting a lot of press all over the world.

    http://www.zedfactory.com

    The Beddington Zero Energy Development is a 80 unit near carbon neutral community that relies very heavily on the available solar resource that democratically reaches almost every unit in the development with roof gardens, rainwater collection, built in solar photovoltaics that are used to power electric vehicles driven by occupants.

    Because of the robust and massive south facing construction of this project, there are no heating requirements for this housing project. This project was developed by the Peabody Trust, a housing non-profit in the UK, with the objective to show that sustainable design can pay for itself. They use a very interesting real estate gimmick to say that it’s somewhat self-subsidizing. The live/ work components of the project are rented out at market rates and are said to subsidize the affordable apartments and condominiums in the project. Bill Dunster calls it mixed tenure housing.

    Check out this site. It’ll keep you busy for days.

28. Katherine Says:
    August 9th, 2005 at 11:45 am

    allison: this “storage fee” idea is intriguing.

    virgobee & BB: Ceres does seem like a very interesting organization that would have lots to say about incentives for businesses.

    debba & charlieevett: Grist and RealClimate are great sources of info – thanks.

    cwmiller007: thanks for the zedfactory link — a good place to look for a green architecture show.

29. BB Says:
    August 9th, 2005 at 2:29 pm

    Katherine, if you’re looking for sources for the green building show — and we really should be thinking of it as “building” because it encompasses the entire design and construction process — you should talk to someone at the US Green Building Council. For those who don’t know, the USGBC is the creator of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system, which is a rating system for high performance buildings. Mostly encompasses new construction, but has also branched out into existing buildings, commercial interiors, etc. The system definitely has flaws, but it is the one thing that the majority of players have gotten behind in the U.S. and has at least provided a framework for people to follow, whether they actually pursue LEED certification or not.

30. harmonicajoe Says:
    August 10th, 2005 at 11:21 am

    I thought the show last night was a good start on an incredibly important topic. The political cowardice on this subject could possibly the hardest nut to crack in this giant problem. All the comments above make me shake my head in disbelief that there has been virtually no discussion on this in major media. Thanks Chris and you all for getting this rolling. Of course politicians aren’t the only ones to blame for keeping their heads in the sand. How can GM be so far behind Toyota on Hybrid technology? It boggles the mind. One local topic that I think would be very worthwhile adressing is the Cape Wind project. Thanks.

31. dstrozzi Says:
    August 20th, 2005 at 7:42 pm

    I am delighted that you’re considering a miniseries on climate change, and that Chris Lydon is going strong!

    Any discussion of climate change gets into energy issues, as many above have pointed out. I storngly urge you to include some big-picture discussion of the world’s energy future. There are a lot of possibilities, each with their good and bad points, and a lot of misconceptions out there.

    mulp quipped in a post above about fusion energy being two decades away for the last 50 years. Disclosure: I am a grad student researching fusion-related topics. Past predictions about fusion’s arrival is a source of bitter irony among fusion physicists, some of whom believe the time until we achieve fusion is a new constant of nature!

    I don’t want to be a fusion salesman: it has its strengths and drawbacks, and is a long-term proposition. But we should measure how far off fusion is not in time but in money. There’s a strong case that fusion is $20 billion away, and how many years that translates into is up to Congress. A good, recent talk on the state of fusion is:

    http://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/jet+disk05/hammett/

    Especially look at page 10, which compares the funding and progress envisioned in 1980 versus what has actually happened. Fusion is on budget, if not on schedule!

32. mulp Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 8:30 pm

    What should happen to New Orleans?

    Unless you reject the whole reality of climate change, cities WILL BE LOST.

    Is New Orleans that first city that should be abandoned or relocated to higher ground?

    While I have suggested the fate of New Orleans as a topic in its own right, it is a real world case today. Can we even contemplate the abandonment of a city? Especially a city with the history and legacy of New Orleans? Will emotion cause us mere humans to reject the irresistable force of climate change?

33. mulp Says:
    August 30th, 2005 at 8:50 pm

    Adding to my own comments based on reading the new posts from my last visit:

    While New Orleans doesn’t fit the mold of planned community, it apparently is laid out, perhaps by the constraints of water on all sides, so that a quarter of the population manages without cars.

    Certainly the poor in New Orleans are the least able to afford to rebuild, so if New Orleans is pumped out, the challange will be to prevent the poor without cars being replaced by the rich with CO2 emitting SUV, while the poor are displaced to remote hinterlands requiring long bus or stakebed truck commutes bringing in the labor. All the low wages of yesterday without the community and native pleasures.

    New Orleans represents the first big fork in the road. Do we as a nation follow the beaten path of hubris, or do we take the least used path of coevolution? No matter the path chosen, the real failure will be to not ask the question.

34. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:17 pm

    Is there anybody out there, beside the administration, who doesn’t believe in global warming?

35. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:21 pm

    what’s up h?

36. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:22 pm

    When?

37. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:22 pm

    I don’t know.

38. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    We’ll fid out soon.

39. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    ok

40. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    let’s go.

41. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    on you mark

42. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    get set

43. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    I

44. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:25 pm

    think

45. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:26 pm

    Hello just checking

46. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    what?

47. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:27 pm

    I want to get.

48. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    To the line on time

49. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:28 pm

    What’s the line

50. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

    the line is somehting

51. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:29 pm

    hwere’s it at

52. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    It’s all in your head

53. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    like string theory

54. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    things are heating up

55. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    Just wait

56. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:31 pm

    Just wait you’kll see

57. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    I hope it’s soon

58. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    catch me if you can

59. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

    a few more

60. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    then home

61. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    one

62. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:33 pm

    one more than it is home

63. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:34 pm

    Looiks like it’s close

64. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:34 pm

    Let’s go

65. h wally Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 5:35 pm

    woops

66. Potter Says:
    April 20th, 2006 at 7:29 pm

    h Wally You stole it, sneaky too. It took me while to find you. And I was planning something specifically dedicated to you! I really was! And then changed to suit the physics thread at the last moment with Milton’s Paradise Lost. At least you could have posted some worthwhile things here.

    Here is my poem anyway. It was a gift to you-sincerely.

    Telephoning in Mexican Sunlight

    Talking with my beloved in New York
    I stood at the outdoor public telephone
    in Mexican sunlight, in my purple shirt.
    Someone had called it a man/woman
    shirt. The phrase irked me. But then
    I remembered that Rainer Maria
    Rilke, who until he was seven wore
    dresses and had long yellow hair,
    wrote that the girl he almost was
    “made her bed in his ear” and “slept him the world.”
    I thought, OK this shirt will clothe the other in me.
    As we fell into long-distance love talk
    a squeaky chittering started up all around,
    and every few seconds came a sudden loud
    buzzing. I half expected to find
    the insulation on the telephone line
    laid open under the pressure of our talk
    leaking low-frequency noises.
    But a few yards away a dozen hummingbirds,
    gorgets going drab or blazing
    according as the sun struck them,
    stood on their tail rudders in a circle
    around my head, transfixed
    by the flower-likeness of the shirt.
    And perhaps also by a flush rising into my face,
    for a word — one with a thick sound,
    as if a porous vowel had sat soaking up
    saliva while waiting to get spoken,
    possibly the name of some flower
    that hummingbirds love, perhaps
    “honeysuckle” or “hollyhock”
    or “phlox” — just then shocked me
    with its suddenness, and this time
    apparently did burst the insulation,
    letting the word sound in the open
    where all could hear, for these tiny, irascible,
    nectar-addicted puritans jumped back
    all at once, as if the air gasped.

    Galway Kinnell

67. khasidi Says:
    April 27th, 2006 at 8:25 pm

    Hurray for a show that deals with various methods to encourage conservation and alternative sources of energy. I recently read an artical by Colin Challen in the Independent [Colin Challen: We must think the unthinkable, and take voters with us, 28 March 2006] in which he argues for “Carbon Credits” to be issued to citizens rather than companies.

    The idea is that a nation would set a limit on how much fossil fuel would be used over the next year. Then the credits would be issued to the citizens. The people would be able to sell these and use the money either to cover the increases in fuel costs or, if they were clever about conserving and alternative energy sources, they could trade their credits or save them. In other words, the credits would function as a form of money.

    The wonderful thing about this scheme, as opposed to taxing fossil fuels, is that it would immediately reimburse the people, including lower income people, as they feel the pinch of higher fuel costs. The oil and coal industries would have to buy up the credits if they wanted to sell energy products. Of course the cost of fossil fuels would go up, but with the increases going back to the consumers, there would be a tremendous incentive throughout the economy to come up with solutions to the needs for energy. With the creativity of nearly everyone in the country focussed on conservation and alternatives to fossil fuel, we could apply the undoubted efficiencies of the market to this problem and avoid cumbersome government regulation and welfare programs.

68. Anna Calypte Says:
    May 2nd, 2006 at 1:56 am

    zzzzzz-zzz-tsip-zrr-tze zzzzzzz-tsee-tzeee zdip-tzeee-rzk-zzzzz
    zzzzzz-tze dzk-tsip-zzzz-tsip-zzzzz-tsip-zsk-zzz

69. rzk-tzeee-tza!-tzeee-zsk Selasphorus Says:
    May 2nd, 2006 at 7:41 pm

    zsk-dzt-zta!-rzk-dzt zzzzzz-zta!-zrr-krz-tsip-zzzzz-zgk
    sqk-tzeee-tsip-dzt zdip-tzeee-rzk-zzzzz-tsip-zzzzz-zgk
    zrr-tze-dzt tzeee-zsk zrr-tsip-vrz-tze !

70. Ater Molothrus Says:
    May 2nd, 2006 at 9:46 pm

    Please don’t listen to those stupid hummingbirds. We hate forests and love the warming climate. We adore humans for providing us vast new tracts of our continent to parasitize.
    And please don’t do any more of your wretched shows on this miracle you call ‘global warming’. When it seeps out of your cars, it hurts our ears.

71. rzk-tzeee-tza!-tzeee-zsk Selasphorus Says:
    May 2nd, 2006 at 11:22 pm

    tza!-tzeee-zdk-krz zzzzzzz-tsee-tzeee zta!-dzt-tze-rzk !!!

72. peggysue Says:
    May 10th, 2006 at 9:58 am

    here is how Halliburton is solving the global warming problem. Be sure to look at the photos.

    http://www.halliburtoncontracts.com/about/

73. hurley Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 7:17 am

    I’m writing from Rome (Italy, not Georgia) where the temperatures are hovering in the high 30s (centigrade) and due to go higher, not unusual for Rome — and for much of Europe — these days. My computer dangerously warm (a friend’s computer recently melted at room temperature), so for now just two suggestions for this worthy series:
    -Talk to Tim Parks, an intelligent British writer resident in Italy, whose recent fiction has dealt to some extent with global warming.
    -See the recent and terrifying BBC documentary, Global Dimming, which persuasively makes the case that the collateral effects of man-made pollution (reduced levels of sunlight — 20% less in Israel, for example, over the last 40 years) have masked the true dimensions of the crisis, with devastating effects of their own (the famine in the Sahel). It raises the possibility that the pattern of the monsoon rains could shift, which would spell doom not for millions, but for billions in the effected regions.

74. hurley Says:
    July 22nd, 2006 at 7:34 am

    Thanks, Peggysue, for that incredible link. The Survivaball straight out of Sleeper. And this passage from the promotional copy startling even coming from Haliburton:

    “In order to head off such catastrophic scenarios, scientists agree we must reduce our carbon emissions by 70% within the next few years. Doing that would seriously undermine corporate profits, however, and so a more forward-thinking solution is needed.”

    Not to put too fine a point on it…

75. billyb Says:
    January 22nd, 2007 at 3:33 pm

    hey, does anybody read this any more? eeerrrm…. right, im not from any collages or universities or anything but i wanted to chat to someone about global warming! i have been thinking that carbon emissions, pollution, whatever, dont have that much to do with global warming! has anybody thought about if the Earth just nudged out of its orbit and slightly closer the sun? would that explain the ice caps melting, hole in the ozone layer, warmer seas? would we even notice if it did? has this ever been talked about before? if anyone cares to elabarate or kick my theory into the mud please do!

76. Tsarena Says:
    April 20th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    Not to kick your theory into the mud, but it has a few problems. First, if the earth were nudged out of it’s orbit our problems would be worse than just global warming. You are right in the sense that carbon emmissions, and pollution play a less significant role than one might think. For example, when a volcano errupts it releases more “bad chemicals” into the air then the car emissons of the world combined. This is not to say that emissions are not a problem. When you look at the graphs of global temperature there are patterns of highs and lows that are directly related to the amount of CO2 in the air. However, in the last few years, and since the advent of cars, the high has been off the charts. There is a clear relationship between pollution and the change in temperature. Furthermore, when the whole in the ozone layer was discovered, we banned the use of clouroflourcarbons (CFCs), and the wholes, since that chemical was banned have decreased. If you are interested in learning some more of the simple science I suggest you watch John Kerry’s documentary “Inconvient Truth”. While you may not like him as a polition, his documentary is still accurate.

77. kbb99507 Says:
    May 1st, 2007 at 5:30 pm

    It seems to me that all this whoo ha ha about the artic melting is just an opportunity to make big bucks. Yeah and save the earth while making a mint.

    Here ya go sports fans!!!!

    Make synthetic styrofoam balls and float them whre the artic is now. Sound stupid…Think about it, doesn’t have to be styrofoam as this is drivied from oil but any white non water soluble substance lighter than water will do the trick. That is a lot of material but want to lower the earths tempetature no problemo. Not rocket science to make a reflective material that floats and allows the oxygen exchange with the water, non toxic to fish and mamals.

    Oh well wake me up when you have a more difficult problem!!!

    Now on the topic of CO2 in our atmosphere, let me see with a little study on the algae in the ocean we can see that algae also absorbs CO2 and releases oxygen…Hmmm Could we produce a white algae by changing the chromospors physiology? then you could forget getting a syntetic reflective material to float on the ocean surface and just use contained algae that is biochemically modified to be reflective in nature…. Just some thought of a mad scientist or is it!!

78. Ben Says:
    May 22nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm

    kbb99507, your comment is funny enough to close the thread. It is true that there is money to be made whenever there is technological advancement. When there is opportunity it will be taken advantage of. Now if you can teach polar bears to fish through lids in this amazing plastic contraption, or for the seals to open trap doors in the bottom with their noses so they can breathe, it will be very impressive. The imagery of that would be some fun for the camera crews of future polar wildlife documentaries, and the voice over would be pretty amazing.

79. billdjennings Says:
    June 11th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    It is all about the oil, that is why we ship grapes from Chile to the US why we sell out ruby red grapefruit to Japan and import ruby reds from South America it burns oil. Container ships burn straight crude oil now so until we stop all this swapping of products around the world and let each country consume its on and export only what is left to countries where the product cannot be produced then will we really reduce global warming.

80. joel Says:
    October 3rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    The prime cause is still almost 5.5 billion too many people that this earth can’t take care of. All the rest is trivia.

    Cheers.

81. Jim Dearing Says:
    December 12th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    So now what does everybody think now that hackers have broke into the data depository and found out that the global warming fiasco was manufactured?

    Atlanta Auto Tinting

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