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Tuesday, May 29, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
This spring, and most recently last week, Las Vegas has been blanketed by the smoke from wildfires from central Arizona and northern Nevada. This smoke is a potentially serious medical issue for seniors, children, and for anyone with respiratory problems or compromised health.
Those who are healthy enough to go on with our lives too often just shrug and say there’s nothing we can do about these toxic forest fires. But in fact, fires like these are getting bigger and more dangerous all the time, and a prime contributor to these conflagrations is climate change. Global warming is changing our Western forests, making them sicker and more susceptible to huge wildfires.
Global warming is not “natural.” The nearly universal consensus among scientists is that it is occurring because we are pumping huge amounts of carbon into our air from the burning of fossil fuels, such as that from coal plants. We don’t have to do that. We need to make sure the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority and the will to limit the industrial carbon pollution this country produces. Doing so will make us, and our forests in the West, safer and healthier.
The writer is a Democratic state assemblywoman.
So is the US EPA going to tell China what to burn
So is the US EPA going to tell India what to burn
So is the US EPA going to tell Russia what to burn
We know titling wind mills do no run often enough and kill millions of birds. And solar only half the day needing huge batteries and thousands of mile high voltage transmission line are required
When will those that do not want fossil fuel natural gas and coal going let Nuclear power replace the large plants
-----)
Still no evidence that these fires were caused by global warming
Good letter assemblywoman. We have a God given responsibility to protect and preserve His natural gifts to us. HOWEVER, I opine the EPA is not the way. Too often, that is too often, it puts more and more laws above common sense to the detriment of the environment, nature and their inhabitants.
Carmine A. DiFazio
Peggy Pierce; I knew the moment I read that you are a Democratic state assemblywoman, just why you made the blanket statement of coal factories being the primary cause for global warming.
I don't accept blanket statements from anyone. This is especially true when it comes from a politician. I'm thinking, what vehicles do you have sitting in your driveway? Are they all "green energy" vehicles? Secondly, do you have solar screens over your windows and panels on the roof of your house making your residence energy usage 90% "green energy"? I'd say it's a fair bet that you don't.
Yes, just another politician with the motto of, "Do as I say, not as I do".
You need to know Ms. Pierce that not all of us are unwise and senseless to your motivations. If your letter to the editor on energy brought forth a balanced agenda of clean coal factories that utilize the gasification process, nuclear power, and green energy, I would have given your letter great credibility.
But, as usual, with politicians, this is not the case. You had your chance to pose yourself as a representative to your constituents who believes and promotes a diversified energy system that is safe, efficient and affordable. You chose not to pursue this course. Therefore, don't expect a smooth ride in your political ambitions.
"Global warming is not natural".....What is not nautral is the fire control we practice. Fire is natural and needed to keep forests healthy. When the natural cycle is manipulated you get investations that harm the forests and eventually fuels on the forest floor builds up to a point that the fires burn hotter and longer.
In truth most scientists who are paid to support Global Warming do and most who are not do not. That should not be difficult to understand.
Hello Bradley,
Instead of dissembling here why not call Ms. Pierce and actually ask her your questions? The answers might surprise you and, rather than pontificating pointlessly here, educate you.
As to the primary cause of climate disruption:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
Main CO2 emitters:
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissio...
Oh and I will stick with the position of EVERY SINGLE NATIONAL SCIENCE ORGANIZATION ON EARTH regarding Anthropocentric Climate Disruption.
Japan ring a bell regarding Nuclear power anyone?
Baised on the premise of this story, the only to reverse climate change is cut the population in half and not letting it double in the next 10 years. Any thing else is folly.
Under Obama the International Energy Agency said last week Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes--up 3.2 percent from 2010--but releases of the key greenhouse gas dropped by 1.7 percent in the United States, mainly due to increased switching from carbon-heavy coal to natural gas for electricity generation and the recession.
Economic factors are driving the American results not the US EPA
The increases are in Russia, China, and India so what good is the US EPA to control them
The most impactive contribution to greenhouse gases is termite releases
While climate change, both naturally-occuring and manmade, certainly has an effect on forest health there are numerous other factors. The policy of public and private land managers in the past 120 years to extinguish all fires removed to role of fire from the forest landscape. The great fires of the early 1900's killed off many dominant old growth species and replaced them with the next species, lodgepole pine, which typically has a lifespan of 80-120 years. Those pine are now reaching their climax in many western states and are naturally dying off, sometimes helped along by infestations of beetles. Certainly the fact that the west has been in a severe drought for a number of years has not helped, nor has the number of unprepared idiots moving into the forest interface to commune with birdies and white-tail rats, ooopps, I mean Bambi.
The fire in Nevada wasn't really a forest fire, more of a fast-burning scrub brush and grass fire started, once again, by uneducated, unprepared, unbelievably stupid people who can't read a weather map.
Peggy,
I enjoyed reading your article; thank you for sharing.
Mark Schaffer, thank you for the links.
Clyde,
You must also take into account the amount of impact a person has. People living in the United States use far more fossil fuels and resources per capita than someone living in India. Before you suggest something stupid like the usual argument that environmentalists should just kill themselves, which would show anyone making such an argument as idiotic, I would think that moving to cleaner tech would revitalize many core industries and leave us all with healthier lives to lead. I prefer clean air don't you?
How is Climate Change caused by humans? I remember leaves on the ground by Halloween not five years ago at my house. Now they don't fall off till well into December. How is that the result of burning coal? Well it isn't.
Truth is the planet is going thru some very serious position changes. Some have predicted a pole shift upcoming.
Personally I am tired of hearing from the windmill salesman like the letter writer.
mschaffer: you make my point that the population needs to be cut in half not doubled. The best that all of the "environmentalists" plans can hope for is a delay of two years before a mass population die-off.
you haven't been to India lately if you think the people of India are not polluting at a greater rate than the average American. The same goes for Korea and China.
So Clyde,
How have you calculated the amount of pollution being produced per capita by India, Korea (South or North?), and China? I am well aware of air pollution in large cities in these countries but that is useless in terms of actually MEASURING the amount per capita. Understand?
Clyde,
Please read and understand my point here:
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/sci...
Do you prefer clean air?
The Human Virus
The human species through out its existence has moved from one place to another. Why? When settled in an area for any length time they would use all the resources, pollute that space and move on.
Now that we have technology that can drill, explode, and destroy the environment faster, we are running out of livable space. The phrase "take care of the planet" is misguided. The planet will be fine and heal; it is man who will vanish.
Stephen Hawking:
"We are entering an increasingly dangerous period in our history," Hawking says. "There have been a number of times in the past when survival has been a question of touch and go," like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963, and the frequency of such occasions "is likely to increase in the future." "Because we are rapidly depleting the finite natural resources that Earth provides, and because our genetic code "carries selfish and aggressive instincts," our "only chance for long term survival" may be to "spread out into space."
If we develop the technology for space travel, we will do the same to that environment, until we learn not too. Man will become extinct due to his stupidity and greed.
mschaffer: Again you make my point. A group of Suspect Studies doesn't change anything. Halving the population is the only way to let the planet revert to normal.
you can't kill them but you don't have to save them as was stated in the batman movie.
Clyde,
Nice of you to Use Caps to assert that you think my referenced studies are "Suspect Studies". Now prove they are. Nice quote from a comic book movie.
Now do you prefer clean air?
Silly letter.....and this woman is an elected legislator.
Very scary.........
Comment removed by moderator. - -
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding It" - Upton Sinclair
Don't you find those Orwellian Exxon/Mobile commercials on education creepy ?
Fellow Sane Commenters,
Persons such as Ms. Pierce, were described to me years ago: Liberals believe the world started the day they were born and will end the day they die.
When they see a wildfire, a hurricane, or a swimming polar bear, they believe the cause must be mankind. It truly is irrelevant what they think until they travel en masse to Carson City or Washington DC.
Regards
Purgatory
Drought seems to be a consquence of increasing temperatures too, we're more of an embarressment than Greece when it comes to decreasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere. Sometimes it seems were so manipulated by multnational corporate interest that we'er blinded to the fact that Canada is a foreign country. We'll go on and build a pipe line.The immortal and immoral corporation whose only function is profits for the elites will survive; But will our country or Canada's for that matter survive?
Unfortunately, this comes down to the anti-science wishful thinkers propped up by the fossil-fuel cartels vs. the overwhelming majority (as in 98 percent) of climatologists, physicists, mathematicians and allied scientists. The wishful thinkers want to deny the very well understood relationship between sunlight and atmospheric carbon. This has all the validity of anti-semites denying the reality of E=MC2 because it was "Jewish science" before WWII. In the end, you know, the scientists were right and those mushroom clouds were real.
launce you ought to look up Godwin's theory.
While the comment moderator removed my last post I would like Clyde to clarify who should be removed from the planet to save his half. Surely he has groups in mind and I suspect that it would not include his people just "those" people over there.
@Michael: I'm familiar with reductio ad hitlerum, but unfortunately the smears against Einstein et. al. were not confined to that particular group of extremists. There were quite a few academic bullies in England and on our side of the pound. Fortunately, the powers that be among the Allies were able to put science before ideology. I am old enough to remember when science was something to be proud of and funded, instead of being a punching bag for Fox News viewers.
To those on the far right, those of you that don't trust or believe in science.
I ask, how do you explain away the last ten years of raised temperatures recorded by NASA?
Do you realise the population of the planet has doubled in the last fifty years?
Do you realise you base your anti climate change arguments on what some talking head idiot told you on television? Even the Koch bros. received a mild shock when they hired a researcher to negate the climate change argument and found his research showed other than what they expected.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/201...
Rake, Branco, et al...
Here is a snippet from a letter sent to the head of NASA from former employees...
"We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data."
We, who question the science behind global climate change claims, are not right-wing extremists or wacky science deniers. We are people who evaluate the totality of the issue.
Regards
Purgatory
Mshaffer: its not for me to pick and choose. All i am saying is that the population needs to be cut in half or eventually nature will take its course and overpopulation will cause starvation and the die off from that the earth will recover on its own. The law of nature leaves no other choice.
Purgatory,
That letter has been completely debunked:
http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/04...
I know this is more reading than you are used to but stick with it. In return, answer this simple question: Do you prefer clean air?
Now find a national science academy anywhere on Earth that denies the reality of Anthropocentric Climate Disruption.
Clyde,
Not a bad answer. Do you think we should be doing anything positive to address global resource issues and try to make existence more humane for those of us who are here already? Are you in favor of family planning efforts? How about green technology? Do you prefer clean air?
Mshaffer: yes and stop feeding the parasite, yes, yes.
Forest fires are a natural phenomenon. The fact that we continue to try to contain them all the time is what leads to massive forest fires. Im sure climate change plays a role, however it's not the role which you assert. Peggy, as someone who represents the citizens of Nevada, i would expect a little bit more from you. I generally try to educate myself a little bit before speaking on a topic, i would suggest you do the same.
That "letter" cited by Purgatory has been completely debunked. http://www.skepticalscience.com/NASA-cli...
"As is usually the case in these climate contrarian letters, this one has no scientific content, and is written by individuals with not an ounce of climate science expertise, but who nevertheless have the audacity to tell climate scientists what they should think about climate science."
It's the Tobacco Industry attacking cancer and health research.
Clyde,
Are you calling human beings "parasites"?
The link between climate change and forest fires is well established.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...
http://www.cee.mtu.edu/~reh/papers/pubs/...
http://firelab.forestry.utoronto.ca/pubs...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/27...
Again, the attacks on the overwhelming body of evidence just on the link between forest fires and climate change are similar to (and not surprisingly, from the same sources as) the arguments attempting to decouple cancer, respiratory and cardiac health threats from smoking.
Rake and Schaffer...reasonably questioning mankind's ability to effect the climate does not make one a radical nor does it mean one is too stupid to not understand the health dangers of smoking...a bit of a non sequitur, don't you think?...there are many reputable scientific organizations who question it as well...if I were to name them, Schaffer would throw darts at them, so I won't...enjoy your day...Purgatory
"There are many reputable scientific organizations" who deny climate change... Name one peer-reviewed study. Again, the overwhelming majority of scientists believe in, you know, science.
This is from the academies of science from Brazil, China, Canada, Germany, India, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, the United States and Great Britain: http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/060720...
Purgatory - "We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data."
One - what was the source?
Two - temperatures are still the highest they've been since such recordings started.
Three - there are now 7 billion people on the planet, not the 3 billion just 50 years ago.
Mshaffer: some are, yes
Clyde,
Name them and prove with good studies that what you believe to be true allows you to call humans parasites. Would you put trust fund babies in that category? Or are they the wrong color to be considered "parasites" by you?
Gravity Causes Climate Change: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19476991/John-...
BTW the current GW narrative is a production of the Oil Cartels. They make even more money keeping it in the ground.
They have killed Coal.
They have killed Public Transportation.
They have killed Electric Cars.
They have killed efforts to make gasoline cars more efficient.
They have spent 40 years making alternatives look silly.
GW is about making money. One look at Billionaire Al Gore tells you that.
Mshaffer: the defination is.
Biology. An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host.
One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.
One who lives off and flatters the rich; a sycophant.
A professional dinner guest, especially in ancient Greece.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/parasite#ix...
Sorry to all of the other people , i am getting of point with Shaffer. I will end it here.
Having had biology courses at University I am well aware of the definition of parasite but that isn't what I asked.
Unless Clyde can name specific humans he thinks are parasites (he can't) and prove so with reliable data he is just avoiding answering because at some level he knows he is wrong. So I will move on as Clyde has completely failed to admit error.
The ability to correctly predict what the current climate changes will make on the earths future is speculation.
What is not speculation is being a good steward to the wonderful world we call home. It is as simple as the visit to a campground, the answers here.
Is the land you are going to temporarily inhabit clean and habitable?
If there is only enough firewood for a 2 hour fire every night (natural resources) what will happen if one guy uses 6 hours every night? We get war.
Will there be enough water, firewood and food for the next people to inhabit the land?
In other words have we left the joint in the same or better shape than our forefathers?
I submit the answer is a resounding no. We need to do better.
Peggy's right. What we're doin's goofy when ya look at why we're here, on this little blue ball in the big black sky all alone...
I don't want to just read my Joetry.
What I want is to pleasure your senses, to connect the content of my muses with the character of your soul, to resonate with the joy inside you behind your shy curtain or hiding in your childhood bushes or beneath the anxiety from a minute or a lifetime of shrouded human foibles.
I want to romp with you in the moonlight of your gentle psyche, to cool in the fragrant breeze in the garden of your delight and to watch with you the aligning of the planets and to feel the splattering drops in the cloud bursts of your eyes.
I implore my tongue and my tone and my words to beam you up and over and launch the waves of wonder washing your beach-bound body in the spray of the sea of joy, to lap your toes with frothy foam and cool your ankles, calves and thighs, to engulf your gasping torso and float you away if just for one brief peek into how you and I are lovers of the same universe, sharers of the same air and heirs to the same shared measured breath of life too short to waste in the face of so wavy our wide ocean and so starry our dark sky, so glorious our circling planet and so hungry our beating hearts to join.
Hello JeffFromVegas,
You wrote this:
"The ability to correctly predict what the current climate changes will make on the earths future is speculation."
That you believe future climate is speculation shows a woeful lack of education on this topic. Click on the "start here" option on the top left corner of this website:
http://www.realclimate.org
Only then, after several months of effort, will you understand how little you knew.
You go joe ! Long live Social Security, Medicare and the EPA !
Mark,
If you think I am denying climate change and its effects, you are wrong. I am saying to those who do deny it, that if they are wrong, it will be a catastrophe. And if they are right, they can still be causing a catastrophe.
Hello, back to you, Mr. Schaffer; yes, as usual, no answer from Peggy Pierce to my questions. This is just what I expected from an, as I said, "typical politician".
There are inherent dangers, and shortcomings to every type of energy. We, as a society, learn and improve technology to make the best out of what we have in providing the necessities and essentials to our people.
No single type of energy is enough to solely provide for our populace. It is absurd to think otherwise. We need diversity, as well as continued technological advancement in each type of energy that is available.
Again, I abhor politicians of both the major political parties who make blanket statements that are designed to benefit their self-interests. This is NOT what our elected officials and public servants are to be about.
Smog, ozone levels and haze in Sequoia National Park are comparable to major cities such as Los Angeles. It has the worst air quality of any National Park.
From the Washington Post, "Smog is so bad that signs in visitors centers caution guests when it's not safe to hike. The government employment website warns job applicants that the workplace is unhealthy. And park workers are schooled every year on the lung and heart damage the pollution can cause."
From the Orange County Register, "Ozone also is to blame for weakening many stands of the park's Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines, leaving telltale yellowing of their long needles. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, they soak up ozone through the stoma in their needles, which inhibits photosynthesis. Ozone also stresses young redwood seedlings, which already face challenges to survival."
Yet we have one GOP after another that will say climate change cannot be detected and/or is not happening. These people will post over and over and over, the same irrationality and refusal to see reality. They are not conservatives, they are denialists.
Hello Jeff,
The use of the word "speculation" is incorrect. However, I am glad to see you are generally in touch with the scientific reality of Anthropocentric Climate Disruption.
BChap,
Please explain how any individual's actions matter to the scientific reality of ACD?
"Anthropocentric Climate Disruption"
Is this what it's called now? Hard to keep up with the latest warmer disaster titles. They change with the wind.
Horrible letter and woefully misguided comments from everybody in general but mschaffer is particular.
Forest fires are not the result of global warming. The vast majority of them are caused by carelessness and lightning.
The fact that they spread so fast has two very firm causes here in the west.
1. The idiotic bureaucracy that is the Federal government and it's atrocious management policies.
2. Beetles! Which, oddly enough, the tree hugger crowd won't let anything be done about.
The delusional hack, liberal, global warming nut jobs needs to get out of their insulated academia cocoon and see for themselves what their blind ignorance has wrought.
I know that I will be shouted down but I speak from very first hand experience about forest fires not some buzzword of the day fiefdom.
btw, read "The Wildfire Reader" it may open your you eyes to reality and not just your pet cause.
Mr. Schaffer; I do not discount scientific data. However, as people we have to live and survive. Life goes on, but hopefully with safer methodical technological advancements that help to preserve our Earth.
As far as the politics of Peggy Pierce, I just did not appreciate her playing that game. Talking about a person who has no solutions to a problem, but plenty of criticisms!!!
Adaptation is how one survives; Are we to just surrender to corporate interest and not adapt ?
SunJon -- and the origin of this air pollution in Sequoia National Park is: (wait for it) polluted air from the central valley. This man-made pollution weakens the trees, makes some tree species more susceptible to bark beetle infestation, and makes them more vulnerable to fire. This is not just happening in isolated spots any more. It is happening all over the planet, and corresponding losses are occurring in the oceans that supply most of our oxygen. At least the dinosaurs were smart enough not to cause their own extinction.
Mr. Kelly; I would never suggest that we "surrender" to corporate interests. As an example, in the production of clean coal into energy I have stated in my previous posts on this issue that the government must employ independent inspectors. That detailed checks on a quite frequent basis take place to ensure that factories are in full compliance with gasification systems.
True clean coal production offers one of the most adaptable and significantly reduced unpolluted means into conversion of electricity, hydrogen, and other valuable energy products.
I've left no room for misinterpretation on this issue. Corporations and or companies that falter into a production "red zone" are to be immediately shutdown and suffer the most fatal financial consequences that can possibly be imposed against them.
The planet is so overpopulated and we keep trying to generate more humans to the detriment of other life forms. We keep feeding those unable to survive without help--and then we encourage them to generate more people. Go figure.
Soylent Green sounds like the answer to this idiotic letter and comment section
President Algae Solyndra stated today that "If we pass carbon taxes we'll be able to control floods, droughts, hurricanes and global temperatures".
Then his barber flew in from chicago to give him a haircut. This happens dozens of times a year. On our dime, of course.
http://notrickszone.com/2012/05/30/the-u...
Roberta Anderson..."We keep feeding those unable to survive without help"
Some say feeding babies helps them grow, but apparently in the mind and words of Roberta Anderson, we should just stop. After all they might end up giving us...(OMG "please forgive them for they know not what they do!")...grandchildren!
Bradley,
Please explain what "...True clean coal production..." is exactly and how it is to be implemented.
The Reid-Gardner coal-fired generation station burns coal and dumps most of its combustion products into the air. The actual efficiency of 1960s plant is less than 30%.
In other words NV Energy is making say 575 MW of energy to run down the lines while dumping more than twice that amount of energy into the sky and onto their neighbors. This is what is keeping your ice cream cold, making your TV 's talking heads bobble and their tongues wag.
Piles of ashes mound up and create ground pollution, NOx and SO2 smog up the air and CO2 acts like a greenhouse, letting light in but not letting radiation exit our atmosphere like it did before we started in on this fossil assault.
Mining the coal is expensive, moving it ain't cheap, burning it makes all kinds of pollution and running it down the wires costs another 20% or so in inefficiency. Net coal-to-electricity efficiency at Reid-Gardner is less than 8%...but don't worry...NVEnergy owns the mine, the coal and the shaft, though we also get it...in the end.
We get the dirty air, the polluted water, lung disease and carbonaceous skies. And they bill us for the electrons. For the rest, we're on our own. Cool how this works, huh?
The beetles and the coal burners are getting to be best of friends. In the last fifty years or so their combined rate of decimating our little planet has been compared to a dinner on a silver platter. Lucky beetles! Lucky NV Energy stockholders.
Unlucky trees. Unlucky native Americans downwind from the plant. Unlucky rate-payers getting the bills, the shaft, the crumbling infra-structure and paying all the billions to those lucky stockholders who've signed up for some great dividends as we pay more and more for trashier skies and sicker trees, fatter beetles and Yackira's $5,000,000 salary plus some handsome benefits!
Along with M Schaffer and others, I am quite interested in the response from our leading environmental resource expert, Bradley Chapline to school us on how clean coal can compete with solar in the best solar backyard on the planet with PV costs per kwh nearly identical to coal-fired generation, but very few drawbacks, except of course that NV Energy would not be able to sell the sunlight or lure stockholders to this abundant treasure trove of freely distributed energy forms easily converted into electrons. We're waiting Dr. Chapline. Please advise us sir and share your valued perspective.
Mr. Schaffer; I'll be more than willing to answer your questions on the clean coal process and its implementation. However, first, since you decided to become personally involved in my legitimate questions to Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce, you answer my questions I made of her, and then I will gladly answer yours that you have of me.
Isn't this the way American politics works? One hand washes the other?
Nobody will contest the "old school way" of producing coal into energy and the harmful effects it has had on our environment. However modern technology in "clean coal" production is changing all that. Still not perfect. Still should not be our primary source of energy. But it is getting much better. This is why I advocate a diversified and balanced energy program.
I have to assume the "great poet" of the Sun discussion room is still suffering his last defeat in a prior debate.
Roslenda,
For perspective about over population, please know that every human alive on the Earth today could move to the state of Texas and have a generous 1000 square feet of room. In other words, the planet is big and dangers of overpopulation are almost nil.
Regards
Purgatory
Ensign was embarrassing enough but imagine being from Oklahoma where you have Imhofe who denies the Green House effect.
My utility bill has shrunk to 132 kwh per month. We turned off the water heater and only run it about an hour a week. the fridge is a bit warmer so ice cream is spoonable, but a gallon of milk stays good for the week it takes to down it. Laundry dries on furniture on the deck. All phantom suckers are disconnected, TV, computers, printers, lights. We use LEDs and a couple of CFLs . Nothing draws juice but the fridge and then electronics when we need them.
http://www.examiner.com/article/energy-f...
Smart meters in Nevada are kinda like computers in the hands of illiterates. What we need is to get the idea of not using what we don't need before we get more gizmos telling us what we're using. A little effort in altering consumption can make believers out of passive pigs. What we need is action, not inattention. Smart meters won't work as well a finger flicking stuff off and thinking about what we need before we flick 'em on.
Don't read my article if you don't want to think about it :)
Read the glib emptiness of Chap saying nothing, but mouthing generalities in cryptic cowardice because that's all he knows.
Chap,
Ms. Pierce can speak for herself and I am not at all sure you actually spoke with her. Your vague hand waving about "clean coal" is noted.
A SICK, OLD AND MEAN CRUSTY TREE IN THE FOREST
I haven't disagreed with Ms. Pierce's letter to the editor about making our forests in the West, safer and healthier. However, life for society just doesn't stop on a dime. Change comes slowly.
Just like with human life, somewhere in our forests there is a newly born tree every day. This begins a new age of beauty in the forest.
As well, there are the "crusty old trees" that pass on quietly, with dignity and have appreciated life while it was their time. They embraced all the wonders that man, the forest and the environment have given them.
But then, there is always the exception. Yes, a bitter old tree that has no "heart" left. Yes, the one tree who refuses to accept the path of both man and nature? Yes, the forest fires that burns the old, and makes way for the new.
Yes, it is in our forest. That old, sick, mean crusty tree emitting such a foul odor as it takes its last opportunity to swing an axe in the wind at the other trees in the forest.
The sad fact is, this mean old crusty tree is now alone in the forest. For, most other trees know that the mean old crusty tree once embraced all the comforts of the forest, but now in his waning days finds fault with these same comforts, and demands all other trees to forfeit these same relaxations.
I realize I'm just a little old tree. But the bark is still well intact. But, when it is time for this little old tree to wither away, this tree will always hope for the others in the forest to live a better, smarter life, that is full of all the wonders and comforts that man, the forest and the environment provides.
A "Great Poet" must know what I'm saying here.
Chap,
Our compromise is with the natural world and the physical laws that shape and govern that natural world. It the compromise works we continue to exist if it doesn't we are part of the fossil record.
Mr. Schaffer; I wholeheartedly agree with your closing statement. We have certainly reached a mutual agreement. Thank you for all you posts and supporting links. I have learned more than a few things in my discussion with you that I certainly didn't know before. Be well, Mr. Schaffer.
Scientists from Nevada's Desert Research Institute have found a once-pristine part of the world that has been seriously polluted by airborne carbon - and the result is climate change and associated health problems for the environment and people. This has important implications for everyone downwind of coal plants - and we are all downwind of coal plants. http://bit.ly/L0a7tv
Chap,
Thank you for recognizing that my intention is toward knowledge and improving the world for all.